How to Avoid the Executive Bottleneck Trap

I have this problem, and I have it bad. At Cosmic I'm the bottleneck on more things than I should be, holding onto work because explaining it feels slower than just doing it. Jonathan doesn't get stuck there as often, so we dug into how executive directors and CEOs tell the bottlenecks that are right from the ones capping the whole org, and how to climb out of them.

Episode Highlights: 

[00:01:05] The bottleneck problem, named out loud 
[00:05:05] The real fear behind not letting go 
[00:12:08] Right sizing your role as the stakes rise 
[00:16:10] The ego question every leader has to confront 
[00:21:00] "Just this one time" and how it multiplies 
[00:30:20] The time audit that pulls it out of your head

Notable Quotes: 

Jonathan Hicken [00:02:15]: "I'm a big believer in hire people that are better and smarter than you, and then let them cook." 

Eric Ressler [00:21:00]: "Just this one time I'm going to do it. And then all of a sudden I've done that just this one time five times now." 

Jonathan Hicken [00:26:00]: "You hear stories of executive directors copy editing every single email that goes out. That is the most catastrophic failure of that organization."

Resources & Links:

• Cosmic: Eric's creative agency for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations
• Seymour Marine Discovery Center
• Science Solutions Santa Cruz podcast
• Drafting Our Strategic Dream Team: Eric and Jonathan’s past episode on YouTube

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!

We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com

Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

We have to confront ego in this conversation. I think it's just part of the reality of carrying this title or this role in an organization is is this something that I'm doing because it sort of validates my sense of who I am, right? And like what I can bring to the table? Or is this about what I think is best for the organization? And those two things don't always align.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I think that for most orgs, CEO or executive director should own vision for the org. And I don't mean that that vision should be only theirs, but I do think at the end of the day, for most orgs, the way they're set up, vision should squarely fall on the ownership of the CEO or the executive director, maybe even deeply informed by many other stakeholders. But at the end of the day, like who's gonna sign off on that and spearhead it or initiate it? Agree? No. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

I'm a big believer in hire people that are better and smarter than you, right? And then let them cook.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I'm Eric Ressler. I'm Jonathan Hickin. And this is Designing Tomorrow. All right, Jonathan, I've got I've got a juicy one today. But first, can I just point out double denim? Double denim day, baby. This was not planned, folks. Although, is this just what we're gonna do every day now? All right. So the topic today is how do we get EDs, executive directors, CEOs at social impact orgs, how do we get them out of the bottleneck position? In the sense that like we're blocking stuff from getting done? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Yeah, okay. Uh man, there are so many reasons and so many opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Let's go. Okay, so this is something I see sometimes, not all the time. And I just, hey, let me just have have a moment of vulnerability here. I have this problem and I have it bad. And some of that I think is is actually it's not always wrong, right? I think there are certain things that at Cosmic I should be the bottleneck for, I should be the owner for. Probably the same for you. Um, but also I'm hey man, I'm just gonna say it. I'm impressed with how you run the Seymour Center and how you are able to empower and build up the team and not be the bottleneck on things that you shouldn't be the bottleneck on. So thank you. Thank you. So so tell me, like, spill all the secrets. How'd you do it?

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Oh man, okay. I mean, I think I think the thing that comes to mind first is like a deep understanding of what I am personally good at, especially as it relates to the rest of my team, right? Like, what am I uniquely capable of doing, both in my skill set and in the my time that's available? And the same goes for everybody on my team. What are they uniquely good at? And ideally, right, and I I mean, I'm I'm a big believer in hire people that are better and smarter than you.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Right? Let and then let them cook, right? So it's like being uniquely aware of what they're good at and trusting. I mean, and then just trusting them to go, setting guardrails on uh when I need to know about things and when I don't need to know about things, and making sure that's really clear. I mean, I could keep going on, but let me just pause like what's going through your head immediately.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah, I was going through my head, and and I think I I'm speaking partly from my own experience at Cosmic and also like observing a lot of executive directors who are the bottleneck. Let me just start off by saying when you are in a bottleneck state that is beyond what's right, and you can sense that, it sucks. It feels bad, and you can feel you can feel it, right? I can feel it when I feel like I'm in that position, and I can feel it when I work for people or with people who I can tell are in that position too. And it leads to all these downstream problems, right? Where like problems pile up, they don't get solved, momentum gets lost, everything has to go through you know the executive director before it gets approved. And like there's parts of this that like I struggle with, and I think part of it is because A, we have high fing standards at Cosmic, right? I can drop an F bomb for that one. Um and I I'm proud of that. And so, but the near enemy of that is like everything must go through me personally to to hit our standards. And and again, this is a nuanced thing because, like, hey, we're a small team. When you work with us, like part of it is you you work with me directly, and uh, you know, I'm I'm the the founder of the organization, I lead a lot of our strategy work, so like some of that's not even wrong, but when it gets to the point where I think where I feel sensitive to it is where it's like, uh, I know I shouldn't be doing this thing, but it's easier for me to just do it than to work through it with someone on my team because it's due and I'm late on it, or right? Like these are the these are the the excuses that go through my brain that even as I'm doing them, I'm like, this isn't right, but I just gotta white knuckle it and get it done. And I think that happens a lot for people. So that may be like a personality deficit. Like, is it my perfectionism? Is it my lack of organization? Is it some of those kind of things that that like hold me personally back here? And this is what I observe with leaders sometimes too. Or is it uh is it deeper than that? I'm sure there's a number of reasons why this can can come about.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Well, let me ask you a question. Like when you when you're feeling that you're becoming the bottleneck thing, what what is your fear, right? Like if you were to let somebody else on your team take it, what's the fear there?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

First of all, there's the the the kind of like caliber fear, yeah, right. I'm just like, hey, like when we're doing work for clients, like we want to come through on our promise and our position that we're gonna deliver S-tier caliber work, right? And so, and my team is capable of that, yeah, especially for the things that they are. You talk about uniquely qualified for their role, like what they're there are things that everyone on my team is way better at at least 10 things than I am, right? And then there's the stuff that doesn't fit neatly into that box, right? That is a combination of like you hire a team because you get more than one person. Um, and and that's true for for us at Cosmic. Like, even though we have specialty, the secret saucer, the the the true value is in the collaborative nature of our entire team. Working with your entire team in a co you know, co-creation is a buzzword, but like truly, like oftentimes we are not even, yeah, we're coming up with ideas, but we're unlocking the ideas through the collaboration with our clients.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

Yeah, so let's go, okay, you know, your team is incredible and they're amazing at what they do, but clearly there's still a disconnect, right? Because if that were like plainly true, you wouldn't have this problem, which makes me think like, are there certain skills that either you're not hiring for or that you're not developing that within your team that is creating this gap, right? That that you really do you're the only one that holds that particular talent or that particular, you know, uh scope.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah. And so there are parts of of the team structure where like things do fall squarely on like my plate to do the work for as they should for clients, right, is one flavor of that. Also, like big picture strategy work for cosmic, that's my job. Like, and that's I I don't want to delegate that. I want to include the team, but that's not something I'd ever ship off to like one of our designers or something to figure out. Right, right. It might be a bad choice, right? Business operations, whatever. You want them thinking about you want them thinking about client work. So back to like the kind of core questions, like, why does this happen for me? So one is like, hey, we're delivering important client work, and I want to come through on my promise to clients that I'm gonna be part of that work. And it's not always something that's easy to just like fully delegate. Now, there's stuff that like absolutely I can and do all the time, but there's also stuff where I like I feel like I can add value and want and have an impetus to do that, right? So yeah, full disclosure, like some of this is like my own perfectionism, my own just like straight up care and passion and like deep, I guess I'll use the word like integrity. I want to make sure a client never feels like we aren't coming through on the promises that were made to them.

SPEAKER_03 7:50

Yeah, well, what I'm hearing from you right now is that you see yourself as the holder of a certain type of integrity, right? That like nobody else is capable of meeting that sort of level of integrity.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

I I think that's the dangerous place to get to. Because I actually don't think that's true for our team, and I say that with like pride in the sense that like I'm proud of the team that I've built, right? I trust that too. I work with them, they're amazing. It's true to a degree that like in my mind, as the as the founder of the agency, ultimately the buck stops with me in the sense that like any problem is my responsibility. Not necessarily to solve, but like I own it, right? I'm not gonna ever throw a teammate under the bus because even if they did something quote unquote wrong or like not to our standards, that's still my problem at the end of the day, right? As the as the as the founder of the firm. So there's some element of that, but I think again, like if you take that too far, it can go to a place of lack of trust or perceived lack of trust to and that can be felt by the team, yeah. Or it can be felt by the client, or in the case of a social impact org, the the supporter or the beneficiary or the partner or whoever may be exposed in that same kind of way. So so that's one flavor of this in my experience. And and I've been doing a lot of work on that, and some of that is training, some of it honestly is like systems, some of it is permission, some of it is my own letting go, some of it is my own self-work of just like how much of this is imposter syndrome or whatever else, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:19

Let me put a positive spin on this a little bit because I think what you've done really well is that you have defined the roles and the responsibilities of the people on your team so clearly, right, in a way that like enables them to be successful and enables them to be creative. In a way, you have set them up for success in their particular role. Yeah. Right. And I think that that's laudable. I think that that's that's something that leaders should do. But what you've unintentionally created for yourself is this gap of capacity to do the kinds of things that you are uniquely capable of doing, but that doesn't necessarily need to be true. Now we're talking about bringing other people onto the team, and then there's like, can we afford that? Right? There's a lot of other questions. This is exactly where it gets nuanced, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Because it's like I've made some strategic choices at this moment about who we are and what that means for my role as the founder. And this is, I think, often also true for nonprofit executive directors or social impact CEOs. So a lot of it is team size. Hey, we're right now an eight-person agency. By definition, that means all of us are gonna wear more than one hat. We are not big enough for each of us to have one singular role that we only do that thing, and that's our 100% of our time, right? Executive directors and CEOs tend to often wear multiple hats. As you get bigger and bigger and bigger, you have more team support, and maybe you start to delegate, shed, or reassign some of those roles to specialists who do just that part, right? So some of this comes down to team size, I'll just say. And like smaller teams, like let's think about even the the two-person new idea, nonprofit. You're all you're both doing everything all the time, right? And that's like natural, that's just gonna happen. So some of this is around strategic choices that I've made to stay small, right? And another strategic choice that I've made is I want to stay at this moment deeply embedded in the work. I like doing the work. Um, it's it's the part, it's part of it that keeps me motivated, keeps me grounded, keeps me um real, I would say, about like how we position ourselves and not having that happen kind of as a uh like an academic or theoretical exercise, but like I'm grounded in the actual pain and problems that our clients serve because I'm in there in the trenches with them.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

You realize you've created like a pretty risky problem for yourself as you as cosmic grows, but I mean by grow is not necessarily team comes up, but but in terms of impact, is that as you take on more and and higher stakes work, right? And that the the the stress on you is gonna continue to grow. Like that's not that's not gonna get smaller, right, in the and necessarily in the structure you've built. And by the way, we're using you as a uh as a like a case study here. I've been a case study unintentionally. But like I think that this is the same goes for any executive director in the same position, right? You you aspire for deeper impact for more important work, and you as the executive director need to hold some of that, right? And and I think that that's and I do, you know, I do in my own role. And what I've learned is as those responsibilities scale for myself, I you have to right-size everything else that's going on in the organization, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Because I can't keep doing the thing that I was doing last year because I need to make space for this. So now I have this tough decision. Do I kill the thing that I was doing and we're just not going to do it anymore? And sometimes that is the case for us, or do I delegate that to somebody else on the team, which puts them in a position where it's like, well, we need to kill something that they're doing, right? So it's this, and that I mean, ultimately, I kind of think that that's how teams up level over time, right? Is this like this like cascade effect of taking on new things and killing other things? And sometimes we as executive directors get in this position where we don't do the killing part, right? And the result is that we become that bottleneck, right? Because it just builds up to the top, and then and then we we have to hold on to it.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yeah, so I've definitely experienced this and I've seen other executive directors experience this too. And I think like, again, there's some of this that is for me, I'm speaking personally again here, intentional choices that I made. So we were talking about this a little bit before we were recording today, but in our current trajectory, like we are positioned as intentionally a practitioner-led bespoke design and brand strategy firm, which means that people expect to work with the founder at a small agency, right? If we were a 200 person agency, and this is actually, in my opinion, a downside of working with a big agency is you get the you you meet the founder, you get the pitch team, and then the work starts and you get handed off to the B team, right? Like that's something I'm sensitive to. I don't ever want that to be the experience. So I've made some choices that lead to me being involved in client work that were intentional, which to your point means I can't also do XYZ. And as we grow, and how we define growth is not only in terms of like head count, but in the way I think about growth is like we do deeper, more impactful work for more impactful organizations. That's how I think about growth. It does mean that there's not only more pressure on me or higher stakes on me, but for the whole team. So it gets distributed, but I still am the bottleneck in ways that are good and right, but also at times in ways that are bad and wrong. And I think that's a really important distinction, is like, and the easy way to think about it is like, am I the only person that can do this? Maybe, maybe not. Is that right or wrong? Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. Am I the best person to do this? Maybe, maybe not. Is that right? Is that wrong? Like a very simple kind of set of questions you can ask. What are the parts that energize me and light me up? And what are the parts that feel like a total brain drain? Because there are parts of the work that I do that are just like, I could do it all day and you wouldn't have to pay me, and I'd be happy. And there are parts of it that are just like the necessary grind of like being a business that those are the things I reach for first to try and either like hire up for or to delegate. So that's one way that I've personally worked through this. Hey friends, real quick before we continue today's episode. I'm Eric Ressler, founder and creative director at Cosmic. Cosmic is a creative agency purpose-built for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. For the last 15 years, we've helped leaders like you nail your impact story and sharpen your strategy. But we're not here to just leave you with a fancy slide deck and a pat on the back. We roll up our sleeves and help you bring our ideas to life through campaigns, creative, and digital experiences. Our work together helps you earn trust, connect deeply with your supporters, and grow your fundraising and your impact. If you value the thinking we share here and want it applied to your biggest challenges, let's talk at designbycosmic.com. All right, back to today's conversation.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

Right? I mean, and and that's not not just for you, it's not just for me, but it's just it's part of I think it's just part of the reality of carrying this title or this role in an organization is is this something that I'm doing because it sort of validates my sense of who I am?

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Right. And like what I can bring to the table. Or is this about what I think is best for the organization? And those two things don't always align.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

They don't always.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

They do sometimes, though. They do sometimes, though. And when you when you find that, that's the kind of the sweet spot, right? Is like this is best for the organization, and I love doing it, and I'm good at it.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

That can be a sweet spot, but it also has, in my opinion, like a um a limit, right? Because that can all be true, and you could still be like a bottleneck and way over capacity.

SPEAKER_03 17:00

Well, that's true. Like you may have hired the wrong team, or you, you know, and then so you sort of create this condition where you really are the only person who can do that thing. Yeah. But I think, I mean, the fundamental piece, the thought here is like there is ego in this. 100%. And uh one of the things that, you know, I had a I had a coworker here. Um, we went on a walk for one of our check-ins, and he's like, he's like, Jonathan, he's like, something that's really unique about you is is that um you don't take anything personally. And the rest of us do. And you he was like, you need to be, you actually need to be careful about that. Um, and I think what we one of the things I took away from that is that um I think one of my superpowers is I'm good at failure, and I'm good at knowing what failure is acceptable and what failure is not. And especially in this role of of delegating or trusting the team, I have a keen sense of like, it's actually okay if we fail on that. Yeah, or it's okay if we fail a couple of times as part of that person's learning process. And I go into these conversations knowing, and in fact, often communicating very clearly, like, this probably is not gonna go very well the first few times you do it. Eventually, this is where we need to be. This is what success looks like. Yeah, but it's gonna take some time to get there, and it's okay if you fail. Now, that that alone is not like look, the work we do is like relatively low stakes, right, in the big scheme of the world and the You would at the Seymour Center? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like to a degree, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Compared to compared to some other orgs.

SPEAKER_03 18:29

Some other orgs, right? And so there's a certain degree of failure that we can play with. So I just want to acknowledge that. Yes. But I think that that one of the things that might, you know, um, and maybe this gets me in trouble sometimes, but like my ability to not take things personally and accept failure um in some situations is part of what I think allows me to sort of like create the space for the team to take on these new responsibilities.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Yeah, I think that's dead on because I've definitely had times where and and I've observed this in other executive directors too, where it's like, well, it has to be me because I'm the only one that I know isn't gonna screw this up. And like, hey, sometimes that might be real, but if that's always the case and there's a pattern there, it points to some potential problems. And I and in the past I've had that experience before. I'm like, well, that's if that's true, that's actually a big problem for our model. Like, that's not scalable, that's not sustainable. Um, so I think like that's definitely one version is like you have like the why does this happen? Why do people get stuck in these roles in this in this scenario where they become the bottleneck kind of like in perpetuity, where it's like, oh yeah, I mean we have um this is something that we frankly deal with sometimes where it's like we can't get approvals on things, or we can't because like we can feel that executive directors are uh are the bottleneck on other parts of the org so they don't have the time that we need them to give us in order to do our work, right? So we see it from that purview. So why has this happened? Okay, failure's not an option and they're the only person that can do it, or the cost of sitting still to create the new system or do the training always feels like it's not worth it. And this is something that I do run into sometimes, let's be honest, where it's like, well, I could delegate this thing, but it's actually faster for me to just do it because I know what I want and I and and I know that I can do it, and it's faster for me to just do it than to try and explain to someone who I need to a develop my thoughts and like give it to them and have them do it, then I need to review it, right? So you could come back at me and say, Well, dude, you're not actually delegating in that you're just overseeing, right? That's a difference. Like true delegation means you hand it off and you trust that it's gonna be taken care of.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

Well, I mean, that's a little oversimplification, right? You need to you need to set people up for success, define what success looks like, you know, all that stuff. But but yeah, I mean, fundamentally, I've I mean, dude, you know, right? Like, you know, it's an investment, right? And investments take time, and that's that's like that is the cost of doing business in some cases.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

And here's the trap is that just this time, just this one time, I'm gonna do it. Exactly. Just this one time. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, I've done that just this one time, five times now. And if I had just done it the first time, I wouldn't have had to do it the other four times.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

I want to talk about accountability in this too. And I think one of the things that works in my team here is that we have a really, you know, we're very results oriented in the sense that everybody on the team, regardless of their role, has a clear sense of duties and clear sense of measurable results that they're accountable to. Yeah. Right. And because we're also a small team, we're 10 full-time staff, there is a lot of like collaborating and sharing and wearing multiple hats. But everybody's an owner of something specific.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

I often am involved in the work in some way or another. But what works in our team, and the way in and the reason that delegation can work sometimes, and the reason why I don't get caught in the bottleneck trap as often, is because if I'm holding somebody accountable to a measurable result and I am the reason. Why they are not hitting their result, they know that they are allowed to call me out on that.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

They're allowed to hold me accountable to my role in helping them be successful. And I think that clear A set of expectations and clear roles and a culture that that is receptive to basically giving each other this tough feedback in every direction, that like unlocks my ability to sort of make those decisions about where I should or shouldn't be involved.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

So I'd love to hear from your perspective. Like clearly you've thought deeply about this. How do you make a choice about what is squarely your role and your responsibility? The things that only you could or should do versus the things that you shed. Like, for example, like recently you've taken an intentional uh step into being much more of like kind of I'll just say the PR arm of the Seymour Center through Science Solutions Santa Cruz podcast and other things that you're doing where that was that's a lot of time and energy. I know how much time and energy that takes. That time was being spent somewhere else. So, like, have you had to shed some things? Like, how do you think about balancing all those things?

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Yeah, I mean, so I was actually gonna use the Science Solutions Santa Cruz podcast as an example. Every step of the way in this organization's development since I've been here, I am constantly asking myself, what does the organization need in order to reach the next step? Right? What's missing today that needs to exist in a year from now? And how is that gonna happen? Oftentimes my role here has been sort of the initiator, like starting the new thing and having a clear sense of my head of like, if I start that new thing, what happens a year from now when I'm no longer doing that thing? So I have that, I and I think about that with the podcast too.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:52

I knew coming into this year that that my most important contribution to Seymour Center's success was gonna be uh money and visibility. So funding and visibility. Though those were the two things that I needed to really focus my personal attention on.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

And so we, you know, the podcast was the way that one of the ways we were gonna to work on the visible visibility part. And I asked those same questions like who is most uniquely capable of doing that particular role? Yeah. And at that time, I was like, that's that is me. That's I am the person that is most positioned to do that piece. But even coming into this podcast venture, in my mind, I'm already thinking about who's gonna be the next host?

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

What's the next show gonna be? Yeah, who, you know, what how are we gonna grow this? So I don't actually have to be that, right? But the quality uh and the impact of that particular venture doesn't decrease.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Which doesn't necessarily mean you'll make that choice, but you've at least thought about am I signing up for something in perpetuity here? And to a degree, you kind of don't know until you try, right? But you've you've you've got a contingency plan in place. Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

And and uh look, like I hope we don't kill the podcast any time soon. And if we do, that's not the end of the world. Yeah, right. Like we're gonna be fine. I continue to believe in it and I continue to spearhead that. But but I'm already thinking about okay, what is required of the host or of the producer to make it successful? And is there a world in which somebody else could do that? And I actually think the answer is yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

I think so too. So so what do you think at a high level maybe we could riff on? Like, what should EDs and CEOs actually be responsible for, just like at large? I I'm not sure that you can there's one answer to that.

SPEAKER_03 25:37

And I authentically say that because every organization has a different composition of people and talents, problems, ecosystems. But but what is required is that the executive director is keenly aware of their own skill set as it relates to everybody else's around them. Yeah, yeah. And and it's your job to find that Venn diagram and find that little slice where you're like, I am going to accelerate our success or our impact if I take this role. Yeah. Right. So, I mean, you hear these, you hear these stories of executive directors who are like copy, you know, like copy editing every single email that goes out. And I'm like, that is the most catastrophic failure of that organization because there are a million people who can write a good email, and in all in most likelihood, most people on your team can write a fine email, right? Like, I don't need I am not uniquely capable or you know, uniquely positioned to do that work. Right. But maybe some of us like fall back because it's safe, because it's easy, because you know, whatever. So to answer your question shortly, I don't I really don't believe that there's one thing.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

I think that's fair. Yeah. I mean, uh, if there were one thing, and this also is maybe not this cut and dry, but I think that for most orgs, CEO or executive director should own vision for the org. And I don't mean that that vision should be only theirs, right? Or that it shouldn't be informed by we just did our our our draft uh fantasy drafting episode of your strategic team, which was super fun. And we talked about all the people who should be part of your strategy and your vision is part of that. But I do think at the end of the day, for most orgs, the way that they're set up, vision should squarely fall in the ownership of the CEO or the executive director, maybe even deeply informed by many other stakeholders. But at the end of the day, like who's gonna sign off on that and spearhead it or initiate it? Agree? No.

SPEAKER_03 27:34

Okay. I think in reality, that's probably like 90% true, right? For most organizations. I think that's widely true. But not 100%. But not 100%, right? Because you might you might have someone on your team who is in an incredible orator, right? And they can tell a fucking story.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:49

And you're the executive director, you've got that title. Some executive directors would be like, okay, I'm I'm gonna be the one that stands up and tells the story, even though I've got this powerhouse on my team.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

But that's where that awareness comes in, right? Where you're like, actually, that person, I'm, you know, I'm an ED and I'm more of a like, I'm more of a finance ED or I'm more of a programs ED, but that person's a hell of a storyteller. I want them really owning, you know, the the articulation of where we're headed.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Yeah, I think that's slightly different than what I was thinking of. Like, but I hear what you're saying. I think it actually maybe works for vision too. And so I'm I'm just gonna say I agree generally that like there is no, there's no like every ED or every CEO must own these parts. So I think maybe the better way of thinking about it is what are my unique strengths, even as an executive director or a CEO? You talk about like the finance CEO. Like, that's legit. I've worked with some CEOs and executive directors who are like really weak on some of those other things that other CEOs are good at, but like, man, can they run the books? Yeah, and like because they're so good at that, and because they have the rest of the team to support their deficits, like that is the best thing that they could possibly do. And then their their org is like greatly resourced, they're not constrained, they don't have the scarcity mindset. So exactly. I don't think there is even, and it's so obvious in in hindsight, there's not any one flavor of a CEO or executive director. So I think the the the clear takeaway for me so far is just like how do you how do you get I think it almost comes down to self-awareness. Like we've been talking about that a lot in the show, because I think it is so important, is like being really aware of what your strengths actually are, and like the ego thing, which we touched on briefly, I think is so true and and frankly, like something that I struggle with, even as someone that I think is pretty humble overall, there are things where I'm like, no, this should be me. And like how much of that is ego versus truth. I don't think those things are perfectly aligned.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

I was just coaching someone on my team who recently got a promotion, um, who's stepping into a leadership level that she hadn't been in, you know, prior to this. Yeah. And I believe that she has the skills to do that. And and one of the things we talked about is like, hey, you've got a team of people who are really, really capable at XYZ thing. Yeah. And right now you're still too involved in that. Like you need you actually need to, you need to step back and right, you need to define, obviously, again, you need to define what success looks like, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

But it was, it was like, hey, it was kind of the the essence of the coaching was like, hey, what are you uniquely good at? What is your team uniquely good at? And it's time to sort of like make space for both of those.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. And I mean, in reflection, as we as we kind of work towards wrapping this up, like even in those moments where there may even be some ego involved, maybe there is, maybe there isn't, it just feels like crap to be the bottleneck, right? Like, no one wants to be that. And and I think like what I think about a lot is when I've found myself in that state, and it happens and it ebbs and flows. And for me, luckily at this point, it's still a problem, but I've done a lot of work with the team to figure out how to like release that, and it's a constant thing because it's not like a static situation. We're constantly moving and changing, adding new initiatives, and oftentimes, similar to you, I'm kind of spearheading some of those, I'm trailblazing it, I'm testing it, I'm experimenting, and then at some point I need to delegate, handoff, operationalize it, right? And so it's this kind of always fluid thing. But what I've found to be most helpful is when I find myself in that state, I literally sit there throughout the week over the course of a couple weeks, and I write down everything that I do. And I look at and I score things, love this, hate this, drains me, right? Like however you want to score it. And then you just look objectively back, like, how am I spending my time? And is that the right way that I should be spending my time? So that's a good like exercise that I found has been really helpful because it's just it takes it out of the abstract, out of the conceptual, out of the emotional. It's just like objectively, what did I do? And is that what I should be spending my time doing in my current role in our current trajectory as a company?

SPEAKER_03 31:54

Yeah, and I would say you could do that for, yeah, obviously if you have a giant team, this is less possible, but you could do that for the other people on your team. You should, right? You're like, here's what they're doing. Yep. Here's what they're you know, succeeding at, here's what they're not, right? And so you just get that's like the exercise when you do yourself and your team. Now you're starting to see like, oh, okay, here's really the mosaic of the skills on this team, and here's how, and that might unlock like some insights about how you might move work differently.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah, I think that's right. So hopefully some of these tips and this this the way of thinking about this leads to some of these bottlenecks going away or at least getting a little bit wider for some of our listeners. But uh, thanks for sharing all your secrets sauce, Jonathan.

SPEAKER_03 32:33

Yeah, thank you, Eric.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

If you enjoyed today's video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe, or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.