This Leadership Habit That’s Shrinking Your Company

Being essential to everything keeps your company small

00:00Announcer: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken, Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:29Bill Gallagher: The fastest, best way to keep your company small is to keep yourself essential to everything, to be really good at jumping in on things. That's a great way to start a company, but a terrible way to scale. Every time that you jump in to solve something yourself, you're stealing somebody else's chance to level up.

00:47Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of this Scaling Up Business podcast. Bring our show to you every week. And you'll find 650 of these shows and more at scalingcoach.com. You'll also find our, you can do an assessment with us. We'll give you some thoughts on how to grow and scale your business, perhaps even exit it. And we love doing this kind of work. You'll find monthly workshops from us. You'll find some free downloads, all these back episodes. You can also find them wherever you're getting this right now. So like, subscribe, turn on your notifications. We put this out everywhere we can think to, so hopefully you're finding it somewhere. But it's a regular thing. Come back and get it with us every week. We bring coaches, gurus, authors, CEOs, people to help you grow and scale in addition to some of these stories about my own experience growing companies and our clients. So that's it. Scalingcoach.com. Go find it.

How a leader's hero complex destroyed a $2 billion company

01:42Bill Gallagher: Anyway, back to this topic, this idea. Listen, I coached a company some years ago, and we were able to take this company from early stages through a valuation north of $2 billion value. Big deal, right? That's not a small company. And a lot of people, and we went through a leadership transition. But the new leader taking over from the founders in particular was like just a rock star, like just a great background, like real serious chops in management, in leadership, in multiple domains. So they just were like, look, I'm a cut above. They didn't say this out loud. But I imagine in their head they said, I'm a little something special and I'm going to bring it because I know where I stand. And look, their energy, their physical presence, their intellect was a cut above, except every time they tried to jump in to deal with things, there was an impact on the team.

02:52Bill Gallagher: And there was a delusion at that point of thinking they could do more than they could. So it's like, well, I got a big team and I'm a superstar, so I'm going to go nuts on this thing and we're going to, like we got it to this point, how far can I take it? Turned out it was pretty tragic. Right? So this guy flew all around the world, took meetings, fired off emails, tried to get by on small amounts of sleep every night. People would get a message when they woke up in the morning if they checked their email to have something ready by a morning meeting, and it would throw them into a panic.

03:28Bill Gallagher: Anyway, it's a problem. So they got involved in too many fronts and they didn't work well individually and the guy was too involved in everything and the company stumbled, faltered, slid and was eventually broken apart and sold off for less than $200 million. So that's a big drop, right? So $200 million is a pretty big number depending on where you start, but to go from $2 billion to $200 million, that's very, very painful, right?

Heroes need victims—the addiction to being needed

03:56Bill Gallagher: And that is really kind of the key thing. Look, we as leaders start off with an addiction to being needed. We love solving problems. I love being heroic. I love when I can help my team, right? But it does keep the team weak and dependent. So if you're the hero, you need victims, right? You need weak people to help. It's a mindset, it's a dynamic. So you've got to start to shift things in order to make a difference with this. You've got to get better at developing the team than you are at solving the problem. A focus on building the team that solves problems versus the problem itself. And that is a big difference. It's a shift not just in style of leadership. That's a shift in your identity. Who you think you are and how you are. I am a person who develops teams that tackle things versus I tackle things, right? I take things on. So a shift in your identity. Who have you been now?

Shifting your identity from solver to team developer

04:57Bill Gallagher: Marshall Goldsmith, famous for saying, what got you here won't get you there. Right? The things that got us to this point aren't the things that will create the ultimate breakthrough and lead to the greatest satisfaction and pride in our accomplishments. So it's going to take a shift in something. And the shift is really an identity shift and a transfer of the responsibility for the result and the task to the team and your focus on developing the kind of team that solves problems versus seeing yourself as the person who solves the problem. So you're giving away some of that. You have ultimate accountability for it. But you want to shift this way you see yourself so that you can begin to move into that. And start thinking more and more about who should own this? How do I help them to own it? How do I give it to them in a way that they see it, can embrace it, are confident? And how do I develop them over time?

05:54Bill Gallagher: This is really the fundamental shift that's necessary. I did this, I've talked about it many, many times, but I realized that I was central to the business. I couldn't get away from it myself, not just people like Rocket, but at this other company. But you and I do this all the time. The kind of energy and focus that it takes to start the company is different than it takes to ultimately grow it and exit it. But if you want to be able to exit the company, you have to get out of doing things. And that's not just about giving things away, it's about your identity and how you see yourself. So I saw myself as smart and articulate. Guess what? I still see myself that way. But I needed to add something. So when I thought out to the end of my life, what would I say was successful? How do I want to be remembered at the end of a long and successful family life? I want my family and my friends to gather around and say, look, he made a difference. He was a contribution to people. So when I thought about that, it seems subtle because of course I did that, but it's less about me and more about other people.

Looking at your blind spots to expand who you are

06:59Bill Gallagher: And when I looked at my life from that lens, I looked at the identity, like who I am, and I realized that I was about my accomplishments and my abilities and not about the teams I built and the people and the communities that I supported. So that was big for me because I had then to look at, alright, well I need to develop better people skills and less focus on my marketing chops or sales ability or whatever else.

07:28Bill Gallagher: That I think is the shift for you. Who do you see yourself as today? What do you think are your strengths? And then what would you like to be like 20 years from now? Or at the end of your life, how do you want to be remembered, right? And then start to look at what's the simple, subtle thing that's missing today that you'd like to lean in on? It's almost always going to be about your relationship to people and a shift there in how you see yourself versus them and your role that will start to give you access to the beginning of something where your behaviors could shift. So our behaviors are naturally aligned with the way that we see the world. It's an obvious thing. We see the world some way, so we act a particular way. But you can shift the way you see the world by getting a look at your blind spots, right? Looking at the things that you don't notice, right? So

08:23Bill Gallagher: Where does this come from? Well, Johari Window—maybe some of you have heard that before. So there are things that we know and things that we hide and the things that other people see, but we don't. We're looking for the things that are not even on your radar, that you're not thinking about, and starting to shift into what you don't see about yourself so that you can expand into who you want to be. So thinking about what you don't see, looking for your blind spots, uncovering the limits of how you see yourself today, starting to think about the end of a long successful life—what that looks like—and comparing those two will reveal the gap that you want to lean into. Something that you want for yourself—that I wanted for myself—was to be that kind of a person who was a contribution to other people. And then I thought about that and I realised it's the people. Love and connection with other human beings—that was missing for me.

The contribution to people that changed everything

09:17Bill Gallagher: It ultimately led to here today, to my becoming a coach. I realised more than building a business or making some money was contributing to other people, and that left me feeling fantastic. It made me some money too, but in a different way. So we're looking for that, starting to shift that. And then from that will come ways to delegate, to empower, to support people. And you'll start to appreciate the people more as well.

09:40Bill Gallagher: So here are your things to do with this right now. We want to start to look at the next few things that hit your desk. What are the challenges and tasks? And start to push yourself into thinking, who should take this on? Who should own this before you solve it? Get somebody else to give it away. And think about who should solve it, but why? What is it about them that they love, that they're proud of, that you could say, "Listen, I want you to tackle this because you're so great at that, and I know you take the most pride in these kinds of things, and this is why I think this would be a perfect task, challenge, project, whatever for you." When you speak about it that way, when you speak uniquely to people—and now, you don't even have to be right about it. If you're in the ballpark, people would be like, "Thank you for noticing that." Or, "Well, you're not quite right about that. I love this, not that, but I'll take this." It could be you're not exactly right about how somebody else sees themselves, but if you'll start to see people differently and give away these things that you, until now, have been taking on yourself, you could have a big shift in the way you show up as a leader.

10:53Bill Gallagher: So think about how you are now, how you want to be at the end of a long successful life, what's the gap between those two things, and then how do you see other people. Then, four things: start to look for some things that land on your desk that you could give away, and start thinking about how to give them away and for what, and what difference they would make for those other people that you've been looking at in a limited way. I think that can make a big difference. It certainly made a massive one in my life, and I wish it'd make a bigger difference for that old client years ago. I wasn't successful there. I didn't alter that. The company didn't do well. It was ultimately broken up and sold off in parts that were worth far less than the whole had once been. So I hope this makes a difference for you and saves you some of that pain. I know it's helped me at different points in my life.

11:41Bill Gallagher: Thanks again for watching, for listening. Thanks to my friend and mentor, Verne Harnish, to our production team who gets this show out every week, and thanks to you for watching, for listening. I hope that's helpful. If you want to find out more, if you would like us to do an assessment on your company and some possible options for growth and even exit of the business, go check out scalingcoach.com. You'll also find our back catalogue and some other tools or workshops, that kind of thing, all that more. Scalingcoach.com. Until next time, keep watching, keep scaling. We'll talk to you next time.

12:11Announcer: Thanks for listening today. One last thing: if anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.