Cameron Herold explains why leaders should build companies that run without them. When organizations depend on a single person, growth slows and the business becomes harder to sell. He walks through practical steps: align 12-month goals, audit your projects and people, empower direct reports, and run practice absences to build delegation confidence.
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Imagine taking a vacation and then realizing that your company runs better without you. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But it's not crazy. And this is actually a really big opportunity for you as a business leader, whether you're the CEO or a coo. The best company that we can build is a company that doesn't need us because then that frees us up to be more strategic and to spend more time growing people. So I've been a second in command in three different companies over the last 30 years when I was the second command for a franchising group that became Boyd Auto Body and Glass and is now called Gerber Auto Collision in the United States. I remember going away to India. This was 1997, and I went away to India for an entire month. Now, back in 1997, we were just getting access to the Internet, but we didn't have email, we certainly didn't have videos, we didn't have cell phones like we have today. So I completely unplugged from the company for a period of four weeks. To be able to do that, I had to think very strategically about my business. And when I came back into the business, it absolutely was running better than when I'd left it. And it freed me up to work on it in a completely different way. Now, if you don't do this, if you don't put the systems and the people in place and you're completely, I guess, or the company is completely reliant on you showing up every day, the business is not going to scale as fast as it can. Your people are going to be coming to you for permission. Your people are going to constantly be coming to you for help. You're actually becoming the roadblock and the barrier to growth. So that's the first thing that happens. The second thing that happens inside of your organization, if your business requires you to be there day to day, is your team. Your direct reports don't have the confidence that you would like them to have to be able to make decisions, to be able to go faster, to be able to produce work quicker. But if they have the confidence, they're going to be able to take on more work, they're going to be able to do more work, even work that you don't necessarily have to spend time delegating to them. So some of the problems if you don't work on this are the business is actually going to be a lot slower. The business is certainly not going to be sellable. Right. If you're a CEO of an organization and you ever want to Build a company to sell the company is either going to require you, let's say there's a company coming in, acquiring your company, or buying your company. They're going to need you to stay for the next 12 to 24 months because they realize the company can't operate without you. So now the company's value isn't as strong. But if they come in and look at the business, they look across the organization, they realize, wow, we don't even really need that CEO at all. That makes the company much more valuable and they're willing to pay you a premium for that part of the business. The other thing that happens is that you as a leader, whether you're a CEO or a coo, if you set up this business to be able to run without you, you're going to be able to spend a lot more time being strategic, thinking about culture, thinking about opportunities for scale, maybe working on some of the strategic Rembrandts inside of your business. Rembrandts are maybe IP that are making your business more valuable or parts of the business that if you spend time on, could make the business grow faster. Things like the Flywheel or your hedgehog concept. And if you're spending time focusing on those key initiatives, your business will be worth more. But if you're so focusing on the day to day, if the business requires you to be active day to day, then you're not freed up to work on those bigger, higher impact areas of the business. Let me give you a couple of key points that you need to think about if you want to free up the company so it can operate without you. Here's number one. You need to take a look at the goals and the project plan for the next 12 months with your leadership and your management team. Meaning that everyone needs to be on the same page. Where are you going? What's the plan to get there? And then you need to look at each specific project that is coming up over the next three months, six months and nine months and ask yourself, do I have the right people? Do we have the right resources? And do the people have the skills and the confidence or the connections to make each of those projects through to completion? If you know that you have the right goals and the right plan to get there, and you know that you have the right people and they have the right skills and confidence to get the projects done, that should allow you to free yourself up. The second thing that you want to do is make sure that you've empowered each of the people on your team. So level one is you knowing that that plan and the skill sets exist. Level two is that they know that they have the skills and the confidence to get it done. So your job is to build the confidence so they can look at everything on their list and they go, you know what? Yeah, I got this. And I'll give an example that's really pretty valid in this case or something that most of us can actually remember. Remember the time when your parents went away, maybe for a weekend or for a week. Maybe you were a teenager, maybe in your late teens, maybe you were one of the teenagers that did not blow up the house when they left. So your parents job was to make sure that you understood where to get your food or how to cook your food, and if there were emergencies, who you could contact. And they knew that you knew how to drive to get yourself to any of your activities and how to manage your time. And all of a sudden you realized, yeah, I can kind of handle all of this, right? I don't maybe need to do my laundry during the week, or if I do, I know how to work the washing machine. But your parents thought through all of the things that they normally do for you and they made sure that you had the skills to do it right. Maybe they helped you practice doing it. Maybe they walked you through what the plans were. Maybe they left you some step by step instructions on the kitchen counter that maybe some phone numbers of people you could call so that you were like, yeah, I got this. And then they probably checked in with you before they left. In fact, they probably did a couple of nights maybe where they were just out for four or five hours and they let you practice being by yourself. Maybe they went away for a weekend, then after one weekend away, maybe they did that one week trip and they left you by yourself, but they gave you the skills and the confidence and the systems to do that. That's the key for any leader inside of an organization as well, is you have to know everything your kid, right, or everything your direct reports are going to be having to work through. And then you have to make sure that they have the skills and confidence to do it. And then you have to make sure that level two is that they know that they have the skills and the confidence to do it. And then you actually have to step back and let them actually try it out. What ends up happening when you can remove yourself from the day to day and this doesn't even need to be that you as the CEO or CEO are leaving the organization for two or three or four weeks, it can just be that you're going to set them up for success on Monday and then it's like, hey, I don't even want anyone to talk to me for the whole week. I'm not going to talk to you for the whole week. I'm not going to send you any slack messages. Let's pretend I'm not even here. Maybe you get to just do some deep work during during that entire week and they're set up for success to work through their projects and their plan for that entire week and then you touch base on Monday. Doing that two or three times with your team is really going to build their confidence and their skill set to be able to delegate more. And that really is what's going to set up your company for much more rapid growth. Now that you've learned how to build a business that thrives without you, what are the five stages that every entrepreneur needs to survive? Watch this video next because you're not alone. And also take a look@watchcameron.com for your free training.
