Stop Babysitting Your Team: Build Process, Not Superheroes

What happens when your business depends on one exhausted “hero” to save the day every single time?

In this episode of The Business Fix, Chrissy and Josh tackle one of the biggest hidden problems in small business leadership: hero culture. If your company only works when a specific employee or YOU constantly jump in to fix problems, your business may be running on dependency instead of systems.

They break down why founders and managers get addicted to being the “fixer,” how learned helplessness quietly spreads through teams, and why operational chaos often starts at the leadership level. More importantly, they explain how to transition from a hero-driven business to a scalable process-driven organization built on awareness, autonomy, and accountability.

If you’re tired of babysitting employees, constantly answering questions, or feeling like you can never unplug from work, this episode will challenge the way you lead and help you build a healthier, more scalable company culture.

In this episode:

• Why “hero employees” are dangerous for scaling
• The hidden addiction leaders have to chaos and rescuing
• How leaders accidentally create learned helplessness
• Signs your business is dependent on you
• Why process culture beats hero culture every time
• The 3-part framework: Awareness, Autonomy & Accountability
• How to stop being the bottleneck in your company
• Building systems that allow your team to thrive without constant intervention

Whether you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, manager, or team leader, this episode will help you create stronger systems, healthier teams, and a business that doesn’t fall apart when one person steps away.

We’ve heard it: “Nobody wants to work anymore.”

People do want to work. They just may not want to work for your company, your culture, or your leadership style.

That’s what we’ll be addressing at the COSE Big Summit on October 15 in Cleveland.

If you’re ready to stop blaming “the workforce” and start a team, join us.

Visit COSE.org for more information and tickets.

Your culture is not the poster in the lobby.

It is what your team does when you are not in the room.

That is where The Business Fix on the Road comes in.

We help leadership teams fix the people stuff with keynotes, culture consulting, and practical strategies that create clarity, accountability, and real results.

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

ClarityHR is your fractional HR team, giving you real people, real support, and real solutions. Whether it’s compliance headaches, hiring struggles, or just needing someone to take the people stuff off your plate — we’ve got your back. So if you’re ready to stop using duct-tape and hope as your HR strategy and finally get some peace of mind, head over to ClarityHR.com

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Transcript

0:55

I hate superheroes. Do you? 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 in 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 broken, you need the business fix. How many times have you seen someone come in to work in a cape? Never. But what about Halloween? No. You guys don't. You guys don't dress up for Halloween? No, we do not really know for insurance in 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. And I think you you're you're nailing that. Yeah. That's, uh. Yeah, no, it's so funny because I think back of some of the Halloween costumes I've worn at other employers throughout the years. And when I used to have my long hair, there was another guy that was good friends with that shaved his head. And so we both brought tennis racquets, 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, right, right. Um, and sometimes they were the ones that caused the issue that they had to save. But they've, they've buried that. Um, we've talked, we did our hero to architect talk, talk about that before. And we really want to dive more deeply into the how you make that happen. Because 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 one hundred percent an operational failure, uh, to, to scale. We've talked about this so many times. You have to have process. Um, 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. I, I enjoy repeatability. Um, I was joking the other day with my wife, like I have eaten eggs for breakfast for like the past sixteen years every morning. I mean, unless I'm traveling. It's eggs. Um, she's like, what are you having for? Like, are you going to 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'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 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 a lot of leaders that are like, look at me. I have saved the day. Yeah. Uh, 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 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 sixteen 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 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 three things. It's awareness, awareness, autonomy and accountability. So awareness for 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 knowing 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, 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 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 want to look at my calendar. They just want to. Where are you? And you can hear it in the like, you can hear somebody saying it in the text message. Where are you? That's awareness to me. Like the awareness piece is like these four points that you brought up here. I, I, as you're saying that, um, you are the solution because you are the problem. You are the problem. That is very correct. That's why, 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, I know. Hello, pot. Hello. I know we interpret that discomfort as danger. Yeah, I understand. 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. 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. It does. Yeah. One hundred percent. It does. You don't let go randomly. You build expectations. You build feedback loops. You 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 conflict center. 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. Aha. Yeah. The annoyance in your voice. I'm sure it's just bouncing around someone's car for the next twenty minutes or so. So she's calling me out? Yes I am. I'm calling myself out too. Yeah. No, I one hundred percent. It's funny how like we've talked that we'll do an episode and then we'll go go back to our business. Hey guys, we need to look at this. Um, cause 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 I feel like this is a therapy session for me. Probably probably is. I think that most hero leaders genuinely 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. Yep. 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. But 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 one, two, and three, but really you can do steps one and three and two is kind of like it's a suggest, like we don't have time for two. Let's just go to three. 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 eighty percent instead of your one hundred percent. The team starts learning a completely different lesson. They're not learning to do the work. They're not learning to train their. 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? Yeah. Why do I care if you're always going to fix it? If you're never going to fully train me on 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 two thirds of the way there and exactly. I'm just here to kind of like be, be someone that you talk to while you're doing the work. Like I can be your work companion. I'm just here because 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? Because here's here's some you might start hearing things like, you know, let me check with, let me go, let me go check with Josh. Like you're, 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, but I didn't want to make the wrong decision. So I'd really like your feedback. Or, or this, 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 to, oh, I did to a few others. Like I figured like, I only did this halfway because I know you'd want to change. 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 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 roots for me. People stop thinking critically because history has 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. 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, and that's you. And you can see it in management layers to. This happens in middle management as well. As I say, I think this is I see this the most almost in a middle management. 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 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. It scales amazingly well. Absolutely. Scales. Amazing. Fantastic. Um, from that HR side, how do you transition from the like we're going to wait for instructions because it's going to 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 three. We're going to 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 three things again. So awareness leaders have to become aware of where they are unintentionally training dependents. Right? If every question immediately gets answered by the manager or the founder, the business owner, or every problem gets escalated upwards, the team learns, you know, 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 got to move into that autonomy piece, which is where the control freaks get uncomfortable. And I say, it's going to 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. Just kind of 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, I've done it wrong. Good advice. Don't do it. Don't do it wrong. Just don't do it. 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 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, 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. 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. So it's not it's not in your DNA. No it's not. 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 case. We're not touching the people. No. Just the case. No, to me, like, first off, there's the hero trap. Logic is what I. 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. Um, I like the customer needs this in two hours. It's going to take me five minutes to send it to them. It would take me fifteen minutes to get it done myself. Just do it. I'm just going to take care of it myself. Um, the problem is, is when you look at your operations, it is typically one thousand percent, give or take. Zero. Maybe in the wrong place. Whatever. But let's go with one thousand percent 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 ten to fifteen dollars an hour job or twenty dollars 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. Finding more business. Yeah. Um, like I said, so you could be doing your actual owner or manager job instead of the thirteen, fifteen or twenty dollars an hour job that you're. Yeah, that your enterprise value. There's a reason why your million dollar business is actually worth ten million dollars, 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 capes flapping in the air, you're like, 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 he's poking you with a stick. He's old now, so even if it wasn't a bus, it's gonna take a mile. If he's down on the floor, it takes a while to get back up. Um, for me, I look at like three tiers of like the, the, the, the SOP for stuff like this. There's the tactical how and this is just the standard clicks and steps like, hey, like step one, step two, step three. There's 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 da da da da da. Simple, simple. Really easy to go through. Um, then there's the why. So most work is taught like history or English. And this is the problem that we have. Um, 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, but 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 ear balls 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 taking that whole machine view. I don't want to say holistic view. Yeah, 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 five steps. The person sitting at the station doesn't know the next five 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. I'd be so mad when you realize they've got a shadow SOP, right? And then you come in with your cake, 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 once again, and this comes back to your three A's in all that because you're creating those three things through this. Um, the tier three 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. Two thousand dollars per guest. Anyone in the building, the janitor can be like, oh, your suitcase broke. Here's a suitcase. Um, 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 what the 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 any time 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 one hundred percent. Do not be mad when they outshine you. Let them know. Yeah. I'm. 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? The to. We'll go a hair off topic of this when someone says like, you've got great people. I 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 is 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 fifty yard line one time. The next time they're jumping in at the forty 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. Like 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. Yes. 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 two. 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 three year old into the pool and watch them drown. Um, No one is saying that ever. Christie 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. 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. I'm upset with that. We have an issue. Um 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. Um, 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 five. Yep. You sure did. Rather than you just being like, I'm gonna fix this before it goes rolling out the door. Um, in some ways I'm going to say it's unkind to save them. Saving them ensures that they stay as a level two performer. Hey, if the bot, 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 thing that I see with this is if you're babysitting the fulfillment, you have no capacity for like market for the marketing firehose, 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 the 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, 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 nine a m to four p m 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. Um, 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 from? 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. Yeah. I always wanted 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. Um, please do not consider yourself a resource typically. 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, you are a resource for ideas 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 because I have been this person. It doesn't mean it needs you. Sometimes it needs you to just sit there and wait to respond. One hundred percent. Like, do you do teams typically want you to stop babysitting? Yes. There was. Unless you've unless you've trained them through learned helplessness. Not to do 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 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 twenty four hour test? The twenty four hour the Saturday test. Is that the, um, just does the business miss me? Yeah. Shut your phone off. 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 twenty twenty. 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 everything's fine. I was like, huh? You're gonna call me when the building has no water? No need to. What are you gonna do about it? You're in South Dakota. I mean, come on. We've had we've had a car be on fire outside the building, and I just got a text message 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. Yeah, I was gonna say you were there when I was there. 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 write, I can't now do my kids listen to that rule? No. Can I go twenty four hours without talking to them? Gosh, not not my eighteen 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 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 them I'm so glad. Because when you're when you're gone, I miss you because 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 because they want to know like, where are we going? What's going on? Like what's 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 into help, 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. 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. Uh, is it possible to be an architect in a company with only two employees? It with technology now? Absolutely. Yep. Um, but I think you still have to approach it with awareness, autonomy and accountability. Totally agree. What do you do with the 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. And it can be what I guess I'm going to say with that is it can be the basic drawings. Yeah. 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 use and we used a bunch of different AI tools to kind of get it started because again, we were those people like, 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. We are going to go like we're at the end of the episode, so we're gonna go outside and burn some capes. Yes. Can't wait. Go to Business Fix podcast dot com. Do us a favor. Take care of yourself if you can take care of someone else too. We will see you very, very soon.