Will Humphreys recalls his boss telling him at an airline: if you can't leave for a week without the boat sinking, you're not a very good manager. The lesson is building processes and a team that runs itself.
Chapters
Back when I was working for the airline, at one point, that was my first. First time I was leading a team. I had a team of five people, and I was taking time off. I was going for. For a week of vacation. Not too much, right? A week. And before I left, I met with my. With my boss. I told them, hey, I got everything controlled. Everybody knows what they got to do. I'm gonna be checking my email every day. I'm gonna be calling the mornings and the afternoon to make sure everything's fine. And he stopped me and said, listen, if you can't leave for a week without the boat sinking, you're not a very good manager. And that stuck because I said, yeah, that is the key. I gotta make sure that the team is able to work without me, and I'm there to help them. But if I can get a step out, nothing crashes because the processes are not dependent on my involvement. That is the ultimate, I would say, free commitment condition where I can actually, you know, go on my business leave on a Friday afternoon like I'm doing today. By the way, after lunch, I'm going camping. And I have no problem that, you know, the rest of the day we will find. They'll close the clinics up and we'll have a great afternoon, no issues. And if there's a fire, they'll be able to know how to handle it without me. Yeah, it's a test of tests.
