A short YouTube monologue (by Clegg) arguing that one of the hardest but most important leadership tasks is to "let go"—delegating work rather than centralizing it around a single talented individual. Uses David Marquet's submarine-parking anecdote: the captain resisted retaking a task from the sole expert, patiently trained replacements until multiple crew could park the submarine, and thereby built a stronger, scalable organization. Emphasizes patience, encouragement, and repeated practice ('fall and try again') as necessary for developing others.
One of the most difficult things to do for a leader is to let go. Because at the end of the day, we trust ourselves. Sometimes we say things like, well, I'm just going to do a better job, so why don't I just do it? But the problem is, is we're making the whole business reliant on us. And that's a weak business. That's power of personality. That's not a strong business. I'll give you an example.
David Marquet. It's the second time we've invoked him, the submarine driver. The submarine captain talked about how on his submarine they had one guy who was the best guy at parking the submarine. He was gifted in parking submarines. And so whenever they came into port and they needed to park the submarine, guess who they got to park the submarine. And then it occurred to the captain once that, what if he's sick? What if he can't do it? I have a problem. And so he asked somebody else to park the submarine. And here's the problem. Didn't go well.
And so the temptation is to go back and ask the best submarine, Parker, to do it again. But he didn't. He waited, and he let the new guy try again and again and again until he became an expert submarine parker. And then guess what they did. They asked for a third guy to do it. And what they're doing is building a bench. And we sometimes are that submarine Parker. We know we're the best at it. We've been doing it longer than everybody else. We usually care more than everybody else. And so the question is, how do you have the patience to let somebody fall and try again, Fall and try again and fall and try again? What will give them the motivation to try again is that they know that we are in their corner cheering them on. It is very hard, I'm not going to lie. But it is essential if you want to build a scalable business.
