Stop Babysitting Your Team: Build Process, Not Superheroes

We've all heard the complaint, nobody wants to work anymore.

Honestly, Josh, I'm tired of hearing it because the truth is usually a lot tougher to swallow. People do want to work. They just might not want to work for you.

Ouch. That hurts. But that's exactly why we are taking the stage at the Cozy Big Summit on October 15th, right here in Cleveland.

We're leaning into the uncomfortable stuff. We're talking about how to find the right people and more importantly, how to manage today's workforce without losing your sanity or your culture.

If you're a business owner or leader looking to innovate and grow, you can't afford to miss this. We're going to help you move past the excuses and start building a team that actually wants to be there.

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Head over to Cozy.org for more information and to grab your tickets.

We'll see you in Cleveland.

I hate superheroes. Do you like superheroes? I hate them.

I like superhero movies.

Yeah, no, see, I don't. And I really— I don't want to say I hate superheroes in my business.

Oh, I don't like those.

Right. You shouldn't have nor really— and I don't want to say you shouldn't need superheroes in your business, but you really shouldn't need superheroes in your business.

No.

If you need or have a superhero in your business, if there is that person that you like, you watch them pull into the parking lot They get out of the Batmobile and they walk into your office wearing a cape? No.

Don't choke them.

No. But you have to realize you need to move from hero culture to process culture.

Oh, I like that.

That's what we're going to talk about this week.

Stay tuned.

She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's If it's broken, you need The Business Fix. How many times have you seen someone come into work in a cape?

Never.

What about Halloween? No. You guys don't dress up for Halloween?

No, we do not.

Really?

No. For insurance and HR, we are the fun suckers of life. No. No.

Okay, okay. That's, uh, there was, there was an Office episode about like casual Fridays. Yes. And I think you, you're, you're nailing that. Yeah, that's, uh, yeah, no, yeah, it's so funny because I think back of some of the Halloween costumes I've worn at other employers throughout the years. And, uh, when I used to have my long hair There was another guy that I was good friends with that shaved his head. And so we both brought tennis rackets, we got identical outfits, and we went as Andre Agassi before and after the head shave.

Nice.

Yeah, you know, a little creativity to it. Yeah, why not? Why not? Why not? We all know the, the, the, the hero's exhaustion when your superhero finally gets tired out, or it being the superhero no longer feeds their ego.

Yeah.

Because I mean, so many cases, I know you've seen this, where there's the superhero that comes in to save the day.

Yes.

And they feel super important about it.

Every day in the business, yes.

Right. And they're like, look at me, da da da da. And you're like, ah, right.

There's a sigh.

Right, right. And sometimes they were the ones that caused the issues that they had to save, but they've buried that. We've talked, we did our Hero to Architect talked about that before, and we really want to dive more deeply into the how you make that happen because we, we talked about that and we talked about why you should do that. Um, so many people are stuck in that hero culture where they've got that one-star employee that they love, um, because that person saves the day.

Yeah, yeah, sometimes it's themselves.

Today we're going to talk about my favorite subject, me.

Me.

To me, when it comes to stuff like that, if you are babysitting, that is 100% an operational failure.

Yeah.

Um, to, to scale, we've talked about this so many times, you have to have process. Um, I, I don't know if maybe if someone's just listening for the first time, they would, they would start to realize I enjoy process a little bit. I enjoy repeatability. Um, I was joking the other day with my wife, like, I have eaten eggs for breakfast for like the past 16 years. Every morning, I mean, unless I'm traveling, it's eggs. She's like, what are you having for— we're like, you're gonna change something? Nope, never eggs. Aren't you sick of those? No, nope.

I know what it is.

It's— it is my process. I, I'm, I'm here for it. When, like, so many times leaders struggle getting— like, they like the hero. Yeah. Boy, I've got this person that just pulls my butt out of the fire all the time, and they're, they're brilliant, they're amazing. Well, like, how do you get out of needing that employee to come grab you by the scruff of the, of your shirt collar and dragging you out of the fire? Like, why do leaders struggle to get out of that hero identity? Yeah, I mean, does it come down to ego, or is it fear that like the culture needs to see them with a cape? Because We see a lot of leaders that are like, "Look at me, I have saved the day." Yeah. So like, why does this happen? Why do they like, "I need to be the hero"?

Yeah, I think it depends. Sometimes they don't trust the team. Oh, gosh, yes. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes they don't trust the system. And I think honestly, I think a lot of times leaders that are stuck in that dynamic where they have to be the hero or they always need a hero is that they don't trust themselves without that chaos.

That, yeah, to me, that as the process guy, as the guy that likes the same thing, the same breakfast for 16 years, I read that and I feel like my spine is like rolled up like a set of blinds and curled up into my brain.

Yeah, I mean, I get it because, you know, being the hero feels important. I think that's where you, you kind of get frustrated with it. But I mean, being the hero feels important because you solve the problem, you save the client, you're the person that's up late doing all the things, like everyone needs you.

Oh.

It does. And it creates what I would call a hero high, right?

The hero high.

It's the hero high. And founders get addicted to it. Different types of employees can always get addicted to it too. And I think moving from that hero culture to process culture, it comes down to 3 things. It's awareness, awareness, autonomy, and accountability. So awareness, first shift. You have to realize that being needed for every decision is not leadership maturity. It's really organizational dependency. And so the first step to solving an issue is knowing there is an issue, right? The first step to solving a problem is knowing there's a problem.

Admitting there's a problem.

There's a problem. So here's some signs. You're on the edge of burnout. Every team meeting, you are responsible for the agenda. If you're doing all the things all the time, every issue raised is always raised by you. Every text. That's one. Like you raise all, every issue in every meeting is raised by you. Another one that I think we don't always think about, but I think you absolutely absolutely should as you're scaling your team is if every text from your people starts with, "Where are you?" Right?

That's horrific to me.

Yeah. But that's the awareness piece. So this is, you know, I might have a problem with hero culture if those things are happening. I'm on the edge of burnout. Every team meeting, I'm responsible for the agenda. I'm the person that's bringing up all of the issues. And my team continues to ask me where I am. They don't even wanna look at my calendar. They just wanna, "Where are you?" And you can hear it in the text. Like, you can hear somebody saying it in the text, "Where are you?" That's awareness.

To me, the awareness piece is like these 4 points that you brought up here. As you're saying that, you are the solution because you are the problem.

You are the problem. That is very correct. That's why it's awareness. It's awareness. So first part is knowing. All right? So that's awareness. Second is autonomy. All right. And when it comes to autonomy, this is the part that founders struggle with, small business owners struggle with, because autonomy means someone may do it differently, slower, or imperfectly at first. At first.

Heaven forbid.

Yeah. Control freaks. And I say this lovingly as one.

I was just about to say, hello, POT?

Hello. I know. We interpret that discomfort as danger.

Yeah, I understand that.

Someone's going to do it differently? No way. I will do it myself forever. But you can't. I don't care. No, that's a problem. So as someone who is a control freak who has had to work on letting go, I'm going to say this lovingly, okay? I realize that they may not do everything exactly the way you did, okay? If you document what you do, they're probably going to get close to it. And you're like, but it won't have the same energy. I understand that. That's okay. If you ever want to scale beyond you, that's something you have to deal with. That's okay. It's going to lead us to the next piece. All right?

Yes.

So, and that is accountability, right? Accountability is what makes autonomy safe.

Your culture isn't what's printed on a poster in your lobby. It's what your team does when you aren't in the room.

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Book us for your next event, conference, or team meeting at businessfixpodcast.com. It does.

Yeah, 100%.

It does. You don't let go randomly. You build expectations, you build feedback loops, you add visibility. All right? If the business only works when you're rescuing it, you didn't build a company, you built a cage. We have talked about this. You have dependency, right? Prison, decorated dysfunction. We don't want that.

Good luck taking your vacation.

Exactly. You're never going to. And I plan on taking a really nice vacation this year. So this is why we have autonomy and accountability. So first, leaders have to become aware of where they're still the bottleneck, where they're rescuing instead of building systems. And then comes that autonomy, which is giving people real ownership instead of making them wait for permission in every little thing. And then finally, accountability is what keeps autonomy from turning into chaos. And when all three of those things work together, Josh, the business stops depending on one exhausted superhero and starts operating like a healthy machine. I know it sounds really simple. It's hard to do.

I was about to say, like, This is all like, duh.

It is.

And most of us don't do it because you're the problem.

That's it. It's when people are like, I don't understand why we have a superhero complex on our— but I'm like, take off your stupid cape. It's really easy.

Just rip the cape off.

Here, want me to help you?

Do you have a closet full of capes?

I do not.

You've collected over the years.

We burn them.

Oh, good call.

Yeah, we don't— we never want to take them back out. No, we burn them.

No, good call. Good call. Excellent. Excellent. So I mean, we've talked about like learned helplessness.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, the annoyance in your voice, I'm sure it's just bouncing around someone's car for the next 20 minutes or so.

She's calling me out. Yes, I am. I'm calling myself out too.

Yeah, no, I 100%. It's funny how like we've talked that we'll do an episode and then we'll go back to our business. Hey guys, we need to look at this. Um, Because we talked about learned helplessness. How does that hero boss accidentally train their team to be incompetent? Because like, look, if I've got the answer, they don't need it. So like, and I've seen it happen so many times where like, here's enough information to almost do your job.

Yeah. Why? Why? Yeah.

And how?

Exactly. Well, let's first talk about how we got here. All right? I think it's really important to figure out how we got here, because I think that most hero leaders think they're helping.

I feel like this is a therapy session for me.

Probably. Probably is. I think that most hero leaders generally believe they're helping because they think, I'm being supportive, I'm moving things faster, I'm protecting the client. That's why I have to do it all. And that's why I really can't hand it off to you. I'll give you this teeny tiny piece, but you're still going to need me because I'm a control freak. Over time, if you're doing that, if you are always stepping in first, if you're always redoing their work, if you're overriding the process, that's a big one. Like, oh, wait, wait, wait, I know that I said that you had to do steps 1, 2, and 3, but really you can do steps 1 and 3, and 2 is kind of like, it's a suggest— like, we don't have time for 2, let's just go to 3. Or if you're rescuing people from the consequences of their decision, you will not let them make mistakes. You will not let something potentially be like 80% instead of your 100%, the team starts learning a completely different lesson. They're not learning to do the work. They're not learning to train. They're learning, don't fully own it because you're always going to step in and fix it or you're going to step in and change it. So why do I care?

Oh.

Yeah.

The why do I care piece. Yeah, don't.

Why do I care? If you're always going to fix it, if you're never going to fully train me in how to do it, why?

Right.

Why do I really even need to do the job?

I will sit here and be your like, I'll get it 2/3 of the way there and good luck.

Exactly. I'm just here to kind of like be someone that you talk to while you're doing the work. Like I can be your work companion.

I'm just here 'cause I'm pretty.

Exactly. That's it. And this is where I really think, you know, leaders need that self-awareness because the warning signs are really subtle at first, right? 'Cause here's some, you might start hearing things like, you know, let me check with, let me go check with Josh. Like you're sitting in your office doing something and you hear someone say, let me go check, let me go check with Chrissy, make sure that's okay. Or, you know, they come to you and they're like, I think this is what I want to do. I didn't want to make the wrong decision, so I'd really like your feedback. Or, or this one, this is the passive-aggressive one. This is, I figured that you probably want it done differently, so can you hear that one? Have you heard someone come, or have you been that person that's come in and said like, hey, I figured you'd want this done differently, so I'm not going to do it, I just want your feedback?

I was about to say I was the person that said that one too.

Oh, I did too.

A few others. Like, I figured, like, I only did this halfway because I know you'd want to change it.

I've done that in the past. I've done that when I've served on different boards because it's like, I know someone's going to take it and run with it. So I, yeah, there's the other one that I think is like the, if someone says this to you, you have a problem is if they look at you and go, well, I was waiting for approval.

Yikes.

Yeah. Those aren't communication issues. Those are dependency signals. Right. Yeah.

That's mommy and daddy issues.

It absolutely is. And I think, you know, small business owners accidentally reinforce this all the time because stepping in feels really good in the moment.

Because I'm helping.

It is. And you get that quick dopamine hit of being needed. You're the fixer. You're the smartest person in the room. You're the person that does all of the things because, I mean, it is your baby and you are saving it. But if I'm consistently interrupting the learning process, the team is never going to build confidence. So that's the awareness. I have to recognize where my own behavior is creating the bottleneck. Then autonomy is if every decision still routes through me, people stop thinking critically because history's taught them I'm going to change it, I'm going to redo it, I'm going to step in no matter what. So I don't trust them anyway. It's on me. And eventually that leader becomes exhausted and frustrated and they're like, why does nobody take ownership around here? It's like, because you really, really—

I have been asked that one from the Hero Boss.

Well, and it's because ownership was never actually transferred. You didn't give them the ability. I mean, leaders think they're creating support, but they're actually creating learned helplessness.

Helplessness.

And the hardest reflection question for a founder or a business owner is, am I building leaders or am I just building dependency on me?

That one hurts.

It does. I'd like you to, like, let's just ask, like, pause for a moment and think about that. Am I building leaders or am I building dependence on me? Because your team cannot function confidently without your constant intervention, that's a problem. The business isn't scaling, it's orbiting around one overwhelmed human being. That's you. And you can see it in management layers too. This happens in middle management as well.

I was gonna say, I think—

This is not—

I see this the most almost in middle management.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, this isn't just a CEO or a business owner thing. It's actually rarely is it a CEO thing.

Yeah.

It's, this is a business owner thing. This is a middle management thing. Like I just, I have to be self-important. You can scale dysfunction. I don't think that people think that, but you absolutely can.

Oh yeah, it scales amazingly well.

Absolutely.

It scales amazingly well.

Fantastic.

From that HR side, how do you transition transition from the wait, like, we're gonna wait for instructions because it's gonna be different, um, to owning the result as like the team goes. Because in so many cases, if you say, you know what, I've been the hero far too much, you're cut off.

Um, I need you to take ownership, right?

You have, you have now— like, to me, it's, it's the analogy I'm going to give you is when a child learns how to swim. I, I remember growing up, for me, it was they pushed you in the pool Um, not a good feeling. No. How do you, how do you transfer this ownership without your team feeling like, hey, I know you don't know how to swim yet because you're 3, we're gonna go ahead and shove you in anyways?

Well, and I don't think shoving people in or, you know, just like take ownership, that's not a plan, that's a wish with a deadline. Like, there's no very tight deadline, very tight deadline, yesterday. So again, you're moving people from Waiting for instructions to actually owning the result, it comes down to those 3 things again. So awareness, leaders have to become aware of where they are unintentionally training dependence, right? If every question immediately gets answered by the manager, the founder, the business owner, or every problem gets escalated upwards, the team learns, my job is to ask, not think. So awareness, right? And employees need awareness too. They need to understand how their role impacts the bigger picture. Because I think a lot of times when people only see tasks, they are going to wait for instructions. So when they understand outcomes, they start making decisions, right? So then we've gotta move into that autonomy piece, which is where the control freaks get uncomfortable. And I say, it's gonna be okay. I've had to learn it too. Autonomy means giving real people ownership before they feel fully ready. It's not reckless. It's got guardrails. We give clear expectations, clear boundaries, clear decisions, and then we let the baby birds fly.

Can go.

Let them go. Because if your team needs permission for every small decision, you haven't delegated, you've just redistributed tasks.

I agree.

Yeah, we're not doing that. Autonomy is what teaches people to trust their judgment.

I like that.

Yeah. And then finally, we'll move into accountability. And, you know, ownership only becomes real when people know they're accountable for the results, not just the activity, which means They have to follow through, they have to communicate, and they have to learn from their mistakes. And so I would say, you know, leaders have to stop rescuing people from every consequence because every rescue delays growth. And when you allow people to win on their own, they're also less likely to freeze. So don't do it wrong because I mean, I've done it wrong.

Good advice. Don't do it wrong.

Just don't do it wrong. So I was like, I see this pattern constantly. I don't see it in myself as much as I used to, which is good. I mean, leaders are going to say they want ownership, so they keep interrupting the learning process. I want people to own it, but I'm going to keep interrupting the learning process. And so they override the decisions, they redo that work, they jump in too quickly, and then they wonder why nobody takes initiative. I mean, like, you did it, you dummy. You did. And I get it. So awareness identifies the bottleneck, autonomy builds confidence, and accountability creates ownership. And so if you do those three things, That's how you stop babysitting and start building leaders.

Let's be honest, you did not start your business so you could spend your days buried in HR paperwork or Googling how to handle employee drama.

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That's clarityhr.com. Simple, clear, and here to help.

I'll give you a few seconds to go to the website while we get ready to get back to the show. And I love how you put that. I really do.

It's not— it's really easy to say. And it can be really snappy, but it's hard to do.

It's tough because it is one of those things that it's like culture. It needs to be looked after all the time because you are trying to change habits over a very long period of time.

Well, and I think for you, you despise the superhero stories because it's not just— success is a shared thing for you. Yep. So it's not in your DNA.

No, it's not the one person.

Yeah. So let's talk about operations. How do we move from hero to architect in that daily workflow? How do we build the SOPs that actually eliminate babysitting as I rip off everyone's capes and torch them? What's the process? The people, not the people. It's never the people, just the cape.

We're not torching the people.

No, just the capes.

No, to me, like, first off, there's the hero trap logic is what I mean. Me being the thinker that I am, I'm always going to look at like, and this is my thing that I had such a tough time to get past. It's going to be faster if I just do it myself. Yeah, I like the customer needs this in 2 hours. It's going to take me 5 minutes to send it to them. It would take me 15 minutes to get it done myself.

Just do it.

I'm just going to take care of it myself. The problem is, is when you look at your operations, it is typically 1,000% give or take. Zero may be in the wrong place, whatever. But let's go with 1,000% more expensive for you to do it yourself because you aren't building a repeatable asset. You're just paying for a one-off result. You're often doing a $10 to $15 an hour job or $20 an hour job instead of working on your business. You could be building systems. You could be, imagine this, hiring others that could do work.

Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh. Imagine that. You could be working with marketers. You could be networking, you know, going out and finding leads. Holy cow. More business. Yeah, um, like I said, it's— so you could be doing your actual owner or manager job instead of the $13, $15, or $20 an hour job that you're Yeah, that you're enterprise value.

There's a reason why your million-dollar business is actually worth $10 million, right? It's if you have true enterprise value because you don't do all the things, correct? Yeah.

And once again, I— we've talked about this before, the bus philosophy. If you get mowed down by a bus, yes, like if you're the one that's saving the business all the time, no one else is putting on a cape.

No, when you're flat on the ground, your cape's flapping in the air. You're like, no, nobody's gonna help you. We don't know how to do the things. We'll just wait till Josh gets back off the floor.

And it's—

he's old now, poking you with a stick.

He's old now, so even if it wasn't a bus, it's gonna take a while. If he's down on the floor, it takes a while to get back up. Um, for me, I look at like 3 tiers of like the, the, the, the SOP for stuff like this. Yeah, there's the tactical how, and this is just the standard clicks and steps. Like lay, like step 1, step 2, step 3. As a little boy, I built a fair number of model cars, and once again, every step was laid out in those things, like assemble tires.

Yes.

Assemble like engine, like that. That's simple. Simple. Really easy to go through. Then there's the why. So most work is taught like history or English, and this is the problem that we have. Or memorize a quote, memorize a chapter, memorize whatever. It should be taught more like algebra, whereas you don't just memorize the answer, you understand the concepts of how the variables work.

So that takes more time, correct? And I don't want to be patient.

It takes more time initially.

Very good. I appreciate how you say that.

Initially. Yes, it does. So if you're up to your earballs in work on something or else, then Yeah, you may need to be the hero for another couple of days, but to me it's, it's taking that whole machine view. I don't want to say holistic view. Yeah, um, it's the whole machine, the whole darn thing. Show people the entire process front to back so that way, not just their station, not just what they do, that way they can see how their output affects others. Because what I see in so many owners, founders, managers that are jumping in and saving things, they do it because they're like, oh hey, I can make this quicker.

Yeah.

Because they know the next 5 steps. The person sitting at the station doesn't know the next 5 steps, so they're not seeing how they can make it quicker. So make sure people know the whole thing. Then they can— when they see the why behind the handoff, they'll stop cutting corners, they'll stop moving stuff in the wrong direction, and you'll stop feeling like you have to jump in on stuff like that. Now we've got something outlined for that. The other thing that I always say with this too is if you want to stop babysitting, you have to give them a legitimate path to improve the system on their own. Um, if there's no official way to suggest a change, like if they see a way, they're going to create a shadow process. You're going to be like, no, wait, this is going wrong.

You're so mad, right? You realize they've got a shadow SOP, right?

And then you come in with your thing, you're like, I'm gonna save this so we can do it better. And then you're like, no, it actually works better without you. Yes. Um, so that once again, and this comes back to your 3 A's in all that, because you're creating those 3 things through this. Um, the tier 3 piece of it is what I, what I would say is granting autonomy. Um, you have to find a way to grant a bit of it to earn that trust.

Absolutely.

And then once you start to grant a bit of that and earn that trust, give them more. Um, the Ritz-Carlton— I've talked about this before— $2,000 per guest. Anyone in the building, the janitor, can be like, oh, Your suitcase broke. Here's a suitcase. They have that autonomy to make those decisions. Are your employees going to make the same decision as you every single time? I hope not. No. Are they going to make a decision that's going to fit with your culture?

Yes.

That's—

that's a better question.

That's the question that, like, does this fit with our culture? Is it the same exact decision you would make? I'm going to venture to say anytime they make a decision, it's going to be slightly different than yours. Yeah. It should be.

And sometimes it's going to be better, and you need to be excited when it is.

100%.

Do not be mad when they outshine you. Let them.

No. Yeah, I'm overjoyed.

I'm so excited when people are like, your people are brilliant. I'm like, yes, they are.

And to me, you know what the best feeling is? We'll go a hair off topic of this. When someone says like, you've got great people, to me, that's the best compliment ever because it says the number one thing that owners do wrong is higher.

Yes.

And you did that right. There's no bigger compliment than that. Um, going back is the other thing is there's explicit boundaries with things. If people have the boundaries, they can be autonomous. If you're having to step in all the time, they have no idea where the boundaries are.

No.

If you're jumping in like one— and this is a problem that so many— most owners don't wait until it crosses the line to jump in. They're jumping in at the 50-yard line one time. The next time they're jumping in at the 40-yard line. Another time it is out of the stadium before they're like, oh hey, I need to jump in with my cape on.

It—

like that, the set up those boundaries. Um, the other thing is, you've already kind of talked about this, if they have to ask permission for everything, why do you have them working for you? Correct, correct. I mean, autonomy is the reward for following the logic that we established in Tier 2. The other thing is, is this is one that I— that is so tough to do. The no rescue protocol. I am not saying push your 3-year-old into the pool and watch them drown. Um, no one is saying that ever. Chrissy has a very disturbed look on her face just because I said we would never do that. Um, to me it is like, there's— if there's a problem, there's a piece that the employee should own. Yeah. Um, and it is, what does the SOP say? If you followed that, well, then we've got to look at this. And once again, it's not the employee's fault then. So I'm not upset with them. Yeah, I'm upset with that. We have an issue. I need to make sure that they know that distinction, that if Josh is on the, on the rampage, it's probably not at them. It's because we have an issue in our processes. The other thing that I like to say is when something— you can't step in too soon. Is you step in at a point where you can say, hey, based on the logic and the processes that we agreed upon, what's, what's your next move from here? Yeah, that, that question is the one that allows them to go back and be like, oh, I screwed up step 5. Yep, you sure did. Rather than you just being like, I'm gonna fix this before it goes rolling out the door. Um, it, in some ways, I'm going to say it's unkind to save them. Saving them ensures that they stay as a level 2 performer. Hey, if the boss— like you said, if the boss is always going to save me on this, why do I do it? Why do I care, right? Why do I care? Why do I step up for this? Um, so be direct with that. The, the, the thing that I see with this is if you're babysitting the fulfillment, you have no capacity for like market— for the marketing fire hose, so to say, of everything else that's going to be going on in your business.

Yeah, I agree.

Um, If you're consistent, if your people are consistent, then you can market that to the outside world. You can market that to your internal people to say, look at what we have. You know what to expect when you walk in the door. If you have a hero— like, did Batman show up every time he saw the Bat Signal? No, no, there was times they, they showed the signal and he would be in the background or whatever. Um, it if you're showing up at inconsistent times to play the hero role, or just swooping down at the last minute, it's not something that's consistent, it's not something that's repeatable. And people want a consistent work environment. Like, yeah, whatever you can do to make things consistent for people makes it so they can take the other things that are the small inconsistencies and they can handle those. If the, like, if every day my lunchtime changes wildly from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM as an employee, how do you plan your day? No, you don't. So I use that as kind of a loose analogy on that to say, like, look, if, if, if you make the basics consistent, there's no need for the hero. That's what we're going for with that. When you're moving from managing people to monitoring the machine, Okay. Like, are you leading by exception? I mean, how, like, how do you feel? Like, are you looking at patterns, or what are you looking at?

Okay, so we're talking about— we're going from like hero to architect.

Yes.

So I would say architects watch patterns and heroes chase emergencies.

Oh yeah, don't be the ambulance chaser.

Don't— no, don't do that. Watch the— I guess in essence you're going to be a meteorologist. You're going to watch for patterns.

Oh, I love that.

I was wanting to be one of those as a kid. Yeah. So you're watching for what's going on. So leaders have to really stop measuring effort and they start measuring kind of flow of where information flow of things. So the goal is not to hover over people, it's to monitor the system. And so it's to monitor whether the system is healthy, where those bottlenecks are forming and where support is needed. So you go from I have to do all the things to I am the watcher of the things and where do resources need to be deployed and where is it, where are we going to see some challenges? Where are things going to be going great? Where do I need to add professional development? Where do I need to do some coaching? That's, that's what an architect does.

I love the, the thing that you said is where do resources need deployed? Yes. Please do not consider yourself a resource.

No, no, no, no. When we say resources need deployed, that is like more cash, more training, more like more effort, more supplies. That is not you being in everybody's business.

No.

You are a resource for ideas.

You know that you said like that was like bad dog, bad dog.

And I'm telling, those of you in your car that are like all prickly right now, I'm also telling this to me 'cause I have been this person. It doesn't mean that needs you. Sometimes it needs you to just sit there and wait to respond.

100%. Do teams typically want you to stop babysitting? Yes.

Unless you've trained them through learned helplessness not to want to. I mean, you can screen for people that are never going to be willing to do things on their own. I mean, I've seen organizations that are full of people that will never act on their own and they were hired specifically for that reason. No, this is not a cult. So you want people to be able to do things independently.

You ever do the 24-hour test?

The 24-hour test?

The Saturday test?

Is that the— does the business miss me?

Yeah, shut your phone off.

Yeah.

Have you ever done that?

Of course I've done that. I do that a lot.

Yeah.

My people don't call me unless there's a really big issue. And even then, they tend to handle most things. Yeah, they don't, because they know what to do. They have a threshold in what expenses are if something happens. I mean, in— here's a great one. In 2020, I mean, granted, I was not in the office, but somebody else was. Our well failed as an organization for the second time that year. And I was in South Dakota. They didn't even call me. I called to check in and they're like, "Hey, just so you know, the well failed. We sent everybody home and the well guy came out yesterday and now everything's fine." I was like, "Huh? You're going to call me when the building has no water?" They're like, "No, we didn't need to." What are you going to do about it?

You're in South Dakota.

I mean, come on. We've had a car be on fire outside the building and I just got a text message with And they're like, just so you know, we're all fine. But this happened. I'm like, oh, I was there when somebody drove through the building.

I was gonna say you were there when someone drove into the building.

Yeah, but I mean, client issues come up, they handle them. A billing issue comes up, they handle it. They don't, yeah, they don't need me.

It's funny. I had the same thing. I recently was at the State House and same thing. Like, I'm like, hey, if I'm talking to a state senator, I'm probably not gonna pick up the phone.

I can't.

Right.

I can't. Now, do my kids listen to that rule?

No.

Can I go 24 hours without talking to them? Gosh, not, Not my 18-year-old. She's like, "What's going on, Mom? Where are you?" Yeah. So, but I mean, if your absence creates chaos in the business and the business is still built around you instead of beyond you, I think that's some, I think it's a sign that you need to do some inner work on your dependency. That's about you. Like if you go away and they, like you come back and you're like, "Did you miss me?" And they're like, "No." No, go away. Don't be upset. Tell 'em, "I'm so glad." Yeah. 'Cause when you're gone, I miss you 'cause you do all the things. But I mean, I don't want them to miss me too much. I really don't.

I like that added too much. I want them to miss me a little.

Tiny bit.

Yeah, no, they should.

They want to know, like, where are we going? What's going— like, what's like what the future forward stuff?

Because that's what I'm working on. You are the leader. Where the hell are we going? Yes. That being said, some key takeaways for today. For me, one of the ones is audit your resources for one week. Track every time you stepped in to help. And by when I say stepped in to help, I, I full mean like had to walk out of your office or had to take a random phone call or had to answer a message. Those are your top SOP priorities. Those are the SOPs that you need to look at and rewrite.

Yeah, I would say ask yourself, what's your awareness on being the hero? I know you have to do some inner work there.

Sit long, hard, sit in front of the mirror. Um, kill the just this once. Uh, every exception is a brick in the wall of the hero culture. Like, you're building that wall.

Yeah. Where are you promoting autonomy? And if you're not, what's something you can hand off?

Because if you're not promoting it, it's not happening.

It's not happening. So ask yourself, where am I promoting autonomy? And then if I'm not doing it, or if I am and I'm not doing enough of it, What can I hand off?

Another one I'm going to go into is write the why, not the what. Update an SOP today and include the logic behind why the hell are we doing this?

Oh, I like that. And I would say my last question for thought is, you know, where does accountability live in your organization?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I like that one.

Yeah.

Quick shot. Is it possible to be an architect in a company with only 2 employees?

With technology now, absolutely. Yep. But I think you still have to approach it with awareness, autonomy, and accountability.

Totally agree. What do you do with a hero employee who refuses to document their work?

You document your discussions and you mandate automate documentation. You have a right to record as an employer, so you do it. I mean, sometimes they don't want to slow down. And honestly, you don't have to slow them down anymore. You can just record everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Can the— can AI be the architect for your SOPs?

Oh, I want to hear you answer this question.

Yes, in many ways. Okay. And it can be— what I guess I'm going to say with that is it can be the basic drawings. If you put in like, hey, we need to go from point A to point B, what would you do with this? It will give you in most cases a great outline for you to build off of. You're going to still need to polish it. You're still going to need to create your businesses. But you guys have done some of that, haven't you?

We have. We've done a lot of it. We choose and we used a bunch of different AI tools to kind of get it started because again, we were those people that we don't have time. We're like, wait a second, if it runs in the background and it's watching us or it's telling us like it can summarize what we're doing or you're doing the work, it's recording and you're talking while you're doing it. And then, yeah, it's a really great way to kind of get that rough draft.

Wonderful. Yeah. That being said, thank you for listening. Um, we are going to go— like, we're at the end of the episode, so we're going to go outside and burn some capes.

Yes, can't wait!

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