I woke up this morning to a text from my husband. Sunny is usually traveling and I wake up to a Good Morning or Gratitude moment from him. This morning, I did get my good morning, but he also shared a link to a podcast he wanted me to listen to. It was about the Entrepreneurial Mindset. The podcast was by Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller of Strategic Coach. They are a wonderful coaching organization, and in fact, Sunny is a member of multiple coaching programs with them. They have even joined us at Build IT LIVE and our leaders have completed their Unique Abilities workshops.
So back to the topic of the podcast—What is the right mindset for an entrepreneur in creating a frictionless future and getting work done.
They were discussing the entrepreneur’s mindset to get things done, and what leads to friction. You see, a good leader should always be trying to do the bare minimum – WHAT – you ask. Yes, the bare minimum. As a leader, when there are things that need to be done within the organization, one must think of three things:
- Can this get done without me?
- What is the bare minimum I can do to get this done?
- Is there someone else that can do the bare minimum to get this done?
It’s about finding our WHOs and building the right leaders within our organizations so that us, entrepreneurs, can get out of our own ways. It doesn’t mean that we don’t do work, what it means, is that we do the work that we are uniquely good at. It’s often difficult, we are sometimes in the trenches and don’t want to let go, but we may need to. We actually aren’t the best at everything—even if we did build the company from the ground up. We have to let go, and true entrepreneurial freedom comes by finding the right WHOs.
When structuring our organizations, we need to look at the work we do. Anytime we take on a project, we need to ask if we the ones doing the work, or if we are able to effectively delegate. Do we have the right team members that can get the work done?
As leaders responsible for building teams, we need to think about the work that we do and if we are the bottleneck in getting things done. How you may ask:
- Step 1: Build a functional organization chart and RACI chart to clearly list all the work that is done in your team
- Step 2: Determine who is accountable for those tasks as part of their job role. Now this isn’t you adding something onto someone else’s plate, it’s who you have today that actually has this role.
- Step 3: Look at your empty accountability centers and ask if they are critical to getting your work done. If yes, then think about your WHOs, and figure out if you can add this to someone else’ responsibility center or if you need to hire.
- Step 4: If you have a Who, and still have to do the work, think about replacing the Who, they obviously are not doing their job in helping you do as little as possible
- Step 5: Find budget and start hiring
- Step 6: Hire someone that is smarter than you at what they do
- Step 7: Make sure to onboard correctly and provide the right support, so that people feel capable and empowered to take on responsibilities.
Our goal: we, as entrepreneurs, do the bare minimum and still get our ideas done. That means we need to build leadership teams that can execute our crazy ideas, and then be willing to actually let them do the work we brought them on to do. Phew… it’s a lot to take in, and that too, on a Tuesday morning, but it’s impactful and true. If you don’t have your WHOs in your team, or organization, let’s start looking, so that we can begin doing the bare minimum.
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