Let's Destroy Command and Control Leadership

Business Brain, the Show for entrepreneurs, episode 436 for Friday, March 31, 2023. Greetings, folks. Here we are on a Friday afternoon. Here with Business Brain. We are the show where we take our business brains and apply them to all kinds of situations to get things that extra perspective. Sponsors for this episode include notion.com businessbrain. That's where you're gonna go to get the ability to try Notions AI engine for free. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton and I'm still out here in Lafayette.

This is Shannon Jean. Hopefully Friday, because recording this a little early. Hopefully sunny and nice.

Yeah, I'm just, I'm putting myself in the Friday afternoon mindset. Shannon, I love it. That's. Yeah, man, it's good.

I listen to this one radio show that I really like and one thing I, I love is on Thursday they refer to it as Little Friday. And it's like Friday. And I'm like, that's great, man.

I like that. That's good. Yeah, A little Friday. Sure.

Friday.

Yeah.

Hey, I'm glad that we're, we're doing two shows. We're getting great response from that. The little shorter.

Yeah.

You know, bite sized pieces and people seem to love it because I always have tons of questions. And I have another question this week that I want to talk to you about.

All right, man, I'm, I'm here. I'm. I'm here chilling on a Friday afternoon. So.

Perfect.

You know, it's perfect.

I'll get a beer.

We'll give, we're good to go.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So I, I'm, I work with an organization. I do some, I do lots of stuff. But one of the groups that I work with, they have kind of historically embraced a command and control infrastructure.

And what do you mean by that?

What I mean by that. The way I, I am looking at it.

Yeah. What's your definition of this?

Yeah, my definition of is there's a gatekeeper who controls access to getting things done, a business owner, leader, whoever. You, you know, whatever you, you, you picking it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whatever it is. But somebody that everything has to go through. And I believe strongly that the more you can flatten your organization out and kill the command and control infrastructure, the more valuable your business will be for everybody. Yourself, your employees, prospective employees, somebody who may want to buy your business. So I want to talk about it with you to be sure. Am I right? Am I missing something? Or is, is this the case?

So is this, is this a scenario where it would be the business owner is, is in the command and control? So it's, it's not a layered approach. I, I just want to, I want to set the stage the right way.

Yeah, in this case it would be a business owner, but I suppose it could also be like a department manager, maybe a supervisor, you know, that was slowing things down, a middle layer of management, perhaps. Okay, all right.

And so it could, it could be, it could be a scenario where you've got, you know, an entire system in place that is based on this command and control thing. I've never heard it called command and control before, but I, but I'm sure it exists. In fact, I see an ink article here from, from where was it? Well, you know, they don't, they don't put the date on these things because they think that that's bad or something, I don't know. But it says command and control leadership is dead.

Well, I love that and I hope that's true, and I can give you some more examples, but it's more this system than it is a type of individual or whatever. I suppose that it could work in all kinds of different layers of the organization, but primarily I'd say business owner.

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Technology right now, big time. Yeah.

It's, you know, an iPhone moment, you know, when they did this, a Google moment. This is another thing. And learning about AI and how to do prompts to get back information like Dave is just describing is very important for all of our future.

Yep. Abs, I. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yep.

We're talking about new stuff, but what about this, you know, command and leadership leadership thing? And, and it. I, I like you mentioned that title, you know, it's the command and control leadership is dead. But there are people that I think still use it and think that it's the only way to get things done the way they want and this kind of thing. And, and you know, it is an.

Easy way for us control freaks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. But it's so frustrating for people that want to go out and things, introduce new ideas, make small mistakes and adjust and iterate and find new ways to do things, generate money, increase productivity. When you have a gatekeeper man, it's very frustrating. And like I said, I'm working with a group and trying to help get some things done and been meeting with some people that all have expressed. Well, I'm, I'm at the point where I don't want to start anything new because it just gets shut down. You know, this kind of, this kind of stuff. And you know, if you're a business owner and you're using this thing, it's like, I also kind of call it the superhero complex. When you first start, like I know I had it when I started my first.

Yes. Oh no. It's super easy. Yeah, yeah.

And you think that everything has to go through you. It's your idea. You're. They're best at this, the best at that. And if it takes a long time to get to the point where you start realizing, oh, I need to hire people that are smarter than I am in different areas. I'll focus on the stuff that's kind of in my wheel house, but I need to delegate out and true power comes by giving up control, in my opinion.

Okay. Right.

I think it's because it make like I said earlier before the sponsor spot that it makes your company more valuable. I read a lot of business guys acquisition, you know, tips and this kind of thing. And over and over the advice is buy a business that the owner has already stepped back from. Oh. Because that business is going to. Going to be far more healthier and easier for you to Step in totally and not have to replace this superhero command and control person or whatever, than they've already done the work and delegated and hired good people and have spread things out and flattened their organization. That's the kind of company you want to buy, not that has got some rockstar rainmaker, whatever term you want that makes everything happen and you're going to have to replace it.

And then you got to be that rainmaker, because you now have the keys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was one of the hardest things we had going when we sold the Mac. Observer. Was the guy who was buying it. The more he learned about the business, he's like, wow. He's like, you know, Dave, you've done a lot for this business. And I was like, yes, I have. But I really don't spend much time on it right now. Like I. And. And convincing him of that was really important. Like, no, look, this thing runs itself. I know that it seems like I'm involved a lot, but I really am not. Let me show you what a day in the life of Dave looks like. And it's really not much of that. This is a good opportunity, and it turned out it was.

But, yeah, that's a big deal. You know, really increases the value. And if you ever talk, you know, we had Bob Gruel on the show about, you know, selling your business a few years ago. And if you ever talk to him, and I've talked to him at length, I know you have too, as well, Dave, that. That's one of the big things they ask, you know, what systems you have in place, what. What is easily transferable, so. So flattening your organization, you know. Cause that's what people look for. But I would also argue that it makes your company more valuable to attract better talent.

Right.

Top performers don't want to be stifled, and they want autonomy and they want to be able to create and build something on their own. And, you know, that's how you. You get them. Because you can have that conversation go, hey, look, we want to hire you to do xyz. We're going to give you this autonomy. We're going to, you know, give you budgets and this and that. I'm not going to be micromanaging you this, you know, and it. You. It's a great cycle to get into versus everything, having to go through one person or maybe two people. Maybe you have a manager that has kind of implemented this command and control thing to feel more powerful. That's a problem because you can have similar, you know, similar issues.

It's going to be the same like we talked about earlier in the episode here. Like it's, it's this. Regardless of whether it's the business owner who is implementing this or, or practicing this or a manager, if you as the business owner are allowing for this infrastructure, this leadership style to happen, you got to fix it. No, I, I, yeah, it, it's tough though, because very hard. Sometimes, sometimes it happens if for ego reasons or control freak reasons, and those are also valid. But other times it happens by necessity when you're starting the business, when you have to be that way and it's really difficult. It takes effort to change from that because by default, your small business that you started by yourself and then started adding people to eventually will remain in this command and control leadership style because you're the rainmaker, because you always had to be. Until you move it from that. It really takes effort. So, yeah, yeah, this is tough and.

That, it's just something to think about. You know, read the E. Myth. We always talk about that book here. It's great. You get a lot of this kind of feedback from that book. And you know, you want to be able to work on the business, not in the business all the time. And that's harder at the beginning. But as your company grows and you bring in better quality people, you should be able to step back and embrace this, you know, flattening of the organization, delegating. But, you know, share your stories. We'd love to hear it. You know, mistakes you've made. I mean, I've made more than anybody who's probably listening right now, but. Feedbackusinessbrain show how have you flattened your organization to make it more valuable?

Yeah, I'd love to hear this feedback. BusinessBrain show and as we always say, if your email's featured in an episode, meaning we read it, you're entered to win a MacBook Air in 2023. So keep living that charmed life. And we will. We'll see you next week.

Hey, I have one more tip for you today before you go. If you want to learn about the most powerful customer service concept on the planet, the next podcast you listen to should be episode 118 of Business Brain, where we first introduced the concept of two tokens. Two tokens will turn your customer service department upside down and change how you solve problems. It's simple, easy to implement and teach, and it will thrill your customers. So have a listen. Search for the number 118 at BusinessBrain show or click the link in the show Notes of this week's episode, and cheers to your success.