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Key Takeaways
- Apply an overqualification test: This will tell you if you’re spending your valuable time on tasks that should be outsourced to a more appropriate resource.
- Convert your intuition into SOPs, embrace small amounts of imperfection, and shift from fixer to facilitator.
- Become the least important person in the room, and let clear metrics define success and failure.
In the early years of building a business, being the best at everything is a survival mechanism. You are the lead salesperson because you have the most passion, the head of product because you have the vision, and the fixer because you have the most at stake. Your talent is the high-performance engine that compensates for a lack of systems and brand recognition in the marketplace. The challenge is that this skill also becomes a huge liability as you scale.
Many businesses stall because the founder is chronically overqualified for their daily task list. They spend their day working on tasks that can and should be delegated to someone else on the team. They end up polishing a team member’s deck because it will only take 10 minutes, or jump on a client call to finalize a deal because they know the client the best. While this feels like heroic leadership, it is actually unintentional sabotage. You are solving today’s problem at the expense of tomorrow’s scalability.
If you are the best at everything in your company, the business can never grow beyond the limits of your own capacity. To break this cycle, it’s important for leaders to learn how to transition from the person who makes the machine run to the engineer who focuses their efforts on building a better machine.
1. Apply an overqualification test
Take a moment to reflect on how you spent your time over the last two weeks. Ask yourself, “If I hired someone with my exact resume and experience to perform these tasks, would it be a wise use of the company’s money?”
If the answer is no, you’re likely spending your valuable time on tasks that should be outsourced to a more appropriate resource. If a task doesn’t require a founder’s skillset and DNA, it shouldn’t be on your plate.
2. Convert your intuition into SOPs
Entrepreneurs often stay in the weeds too long because they believe their intuition cannot be taught. In reality, this intuition is nothing more than a mental model that has developed from years of trial and error. Your job as a founder is to externalize this resource by documenting the logic behind your decisions.
For example, if you know how to write a price proposal, write down the variables that you use to calculate risk. By doing this, your team has a resource they can leverage to make a decision rather than having to stop and ask for direction. By empowering your team to act on your behalf, you can reduce your role as the decision-making bottleneck in the organization.
3. Embrace small amounts of imperfection
Most entrepreneurs are perfectionists. This is understandable because the business is a result of their blood, sweat and tears. The challenge is that this often creates trust issues when delegating responsibility to the team. There is an urge to take back control when a small drop in quality emerges because someone on the team didn’t perform a task to your level.
If someone on your team is capable of performing a task to 80% of your quality without your involvement, this should be considered a win for scalability. The 20% gap is simply the cost of removing yourself as a bottleneck so you can spend time on growth-focused tasks. Over time, you’ll probably find that the 80% quality will likely improve as the team member takes ownership and customizes the process to fit their work style.
4. Shift from fixer to facilitator
When a team member brings an entrepreneur a problem, their first instinct is to simply solve it. It’s very important that you resist this urge. Every time you solve a problem for your team, you train them to continue bringing you more problems, creating a culture of dependency.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t support them or help when they are up against challenges. Instead, shift your role to that of a facilitator who helps them work through the problem themselves. Before long, your team will be bringing you potential solutions that require a quick decision rather than problems.
5. Become the least important person in the room
The ultimate goal of being a founder is to move from being the most important person in the room to the person who built the room. Unfortunately, if you’re the smartest person in every meeting, nothing will get done without your support and buy-in.
Instead, focus on building a team of experts around you who are more than capable of stimulating ideas, debating strategy and making solid decisions. When the team no longer relies solely on you, you remove yourself as a bottleneck that holds the team back.
6. Let clear metrics define success and failure
Entrepreneurs often feel success in the form of dopamine from deals closed or fires extinguished. The problem is that output is a lagging indicator. A more proactive approach is to establish leading metrics and KPIs that help identify where you can improve the scalability and effectiveness of the organization. For example, measuring how many high-level decisions were made without your input tells you how effectively you have delegated authority to the team.
The value of a founder is ultimately measured by how well the business performs when they are away. If the company slows down the moment you step back, you are holding your business back from its full potential. This can be a blow to an entrepreneur’s ego, but true leadership is not about being indispensable. It’s about creating an organization that thrives in your absence.
Key Takeaways
- Apply an overqualification test: This will tell you if you’re spending your valuable time on tasks that should be outsourced to a more appropriate resource.
- Convert your intuition into SOPs, embrace small amounts of imperfection, and shift from fixer to facilitator.
- Become the least important person in the room, and let clear metrics define success and failure.
In the early years of building a business, being the best at everything is a survival mechanism. You are the lead salesperson because you have the most passion, the head of product because you have the vision, and the fixer because you have the most at stake. Your talent is the high-performance engine that compensates for a lack of systems and brand recognition in the marketplace. The challenge is that this skill also becomes a huge liability as you scale.
Many businesses stall because the founder is chronically overqualified for their daily task list. They spend their day working on tasks that can and should be delegated to someone else on the team. They end up polishing a team member’s deck because it will only take 10 minutes, or jump on a client call to finalize a deal because they know the client the best. While this feels like heroic leadership, it is actually unintentional sabotage. You are solving today’s problem at the expense of tomorrow’s scalability.
If you are the best at everything in your company, the business can never grow beyond the limits of your own capacity. To break this cycle, it’s important for leaders to learn how to transition from the person who makes the machine run to the engineer who focuses their efforts on building a better machine.
