Why Forcing Your Best Employees to Stay in Their Lane Is a Multimillion-Dollar Mistake

What founders rarely calculate is the cost of the good hire they quietly underuse.

EXPERT OPINION BY TONY MARTIGNETTI

A founder I once worked with described his best engineer with a mix of pride and frustration. She was the most capable person he had hired, but also the one who gave him the most trouble. Hired to own the back end, she kept getting “distracted.” She’d get deeply involved in product meetings, weigh in on the onboarding flow, and press the sales team with hard questions about pricing strategy. “I need her to stay in her lane,” he told me. “Why does she keep trying to get involved in everything else?”

Eighteen months later, she left for a competitor, with a broader title that allowed her to get more involved. Within a year, she was running a cross-functional team there. He had made the most........

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