Category: Team

Multiple Opponents

What interested me in martial arts as a child was that skill gave you almost a super hero level of invulnerability. In the movies, the expert martial artist would fight groups of people and come out on top. As an adult training in the martial arts, the better and better I became, the more I realized that this was a fantasy. In a real fight, even someone exceptionally skilled has the odds heavily stacked against them as soon as another opponent appears.

To make a math comparison, a normal person’s threat in a live environment is a 1. An excellent martial artist might raise their threat to 1.5. Once another person comes in, the odds are now 2 : 1.5, add another opponent and they’re 2 : 1.

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Rein it In

A lesson that I return to again and again is that whenever I step in to solve a problem, I’m robbing someone on our team of the opportunity to grow.

When I was a teenager, my dad told me that you train people how to treat you. The same thing happens in a team with how you respond to challenges. If there’s a challenge in the business and you always hop on your horse and lead the charge, you’re going to train your team to look to you whenever a problem appears. You will advance your capabilities while they stagnate.

This isn’t to say that you nurture growth by tossing people into the deep end and yelling, “Swim or drown!” Rather, it’s that if you’re going to develop your team, you need to restrain the impulse to fix everything and reign in what you contribute.

Start with:

“What are your ideas?”

“What do you suggest?”

“What are the obstacles?”


Featured image is a Moroccan with his Arabian horse along the Barbary coast. By Eugène Delacroix. Used under public domain.

Juggling When to Hire

We tend to perceive information as static and think in abstractions. However, our experience is passing through time. What something means and how it works is different depending on that passage. For example, if I asked you how to build a campfire, you might reply, “Build a tipi with tinder, kindling, and wood ascending outward in layers.” That’s generally accurate. But if I asked you how to build a campfire in February, when everything is sopping wet, you would have a different answer filled with consideration.

Similarly, though there is much advice on who to hire and how to hire, I haven’t come across much concerning when to hire. The answer to that question depends on how quickly you’re growing.

Imagine a circus performer juggling three balls. They could do this in their sleep while composing haiku in their dreams. As the business grows, you’re going to throw them another ball. Four is a little more challenging, but they adapt. The business makes a little more progress and you throw them another ball. Five is their very limit. Their hands are a blur and sweat drips down their face. They can do this for a couple of minutes at the most. But you toss them another ball anyways. They drop a ball. You toss them another. They drop that too. After a few minutes they drop a couple of more balls and are back at three and having difficulty with that. Suddenly they stop juggling and start throwing the balls at you and then storm out of the circus tent to have a cigarette.

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Hat Tricks for Team Growth

Small business operators are multi-hat wearing folks. We put on our sales hat to deal with customers, switch to our operations manager hat to make sure sales are fulfilled correctly, and then put on our CEO hat to chart a path for the business. We’re a part-time everything. As a business grows, these different hats are transferred from our heads onto employees and contractors. However, hiring ourselves out of a role is a bit of a hat trick.

Hat trick is a term from sports that relates to the achievement of three goals in a game. Similarly with hiring, there are three factors that you have to evaluate accurately:

  1. The financial cost to the business of a new hire.
  2. The financial benefit to the business (in a time span.)
  3. The opportunity cost to the owner-operator.

This makes for some tricky math (pun!)

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The People Puzzle

I spent a significant amount of time doing operational work the first two months of this year. I’ve been providing digital strategy for client projects and augmenting our project manager. It’s an issue because my goal has always been to be a business owner and not an owner operator. The challenge of the situation is that, like many owner operators, I fill several gaps in capability in the business. The gaps I bridge are high risk areas where skill and care are required. Because of this, hiring someone isn’t as clear as if I were replacing an existing employee.

In considering this challenge, I asked one of my friends for advice. Specifically, I asked who he would hire next?

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The People On Your Next Ship

I read Stephen Covey’s book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, when I was a teenager. One of the habits that I return to again and again is to, “begin with the end in mind.” This perspective puts a lens over activity that encourages selection. It improves our ability to make decisions that support intentional change.

There are many ways this habit supports business growth, but to focus on a single example, do you know who should be on your team? Not for today, but for tomorrow. At your next stage of growth, what are the functions, roles, and people?

We tend to react to the environment and problem solve current situations. You hire or contract a sales role to drum up more business because your team is under capacity.

This isn’t inherently wrong, but you’re dependent on environmental cues that will shape your business. They will determine the shape, size, and kind of business you run.

It’s like only sailing in the direction of the wind.

But if you know where you’re going, you can make choices to bring sailors onboard that will aid in navigating to your desired destination.


Featured image is Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort packet-boat from Rotterdam becalmed, 1818. By JMW Turner. Used under public domain.

Your Own Kingdom

Today, the apprentice we hired passed his interview to become an American citizen. We didn’t have anything to do with it, but I’m still proud to be associated with him and supporting his development. He works during the day for us and then in the evenings he supports his father in his janitorial business. I’m looking forward to the day when he steps into his first entry level role and is able to capture some of the investment we’ve both been making in his growth.

Businesses have an imperative to generate a profit. Profit is required for self-sufficiency.

Beyond that though, your business is your kingdom. You make the rules. You can use it to pursue freedom, expression, growth- whatever you want.

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Problems You Shouldn’t Solve

Does every problem in your business require you to fix it?

Entrepreneurs are problem solvers by nature. Creating new value in the world requires fixing a problem for the broader market. On top of that, businesses are problem creating machines. They’re dynamic organisms that require continual attention.

In the Marine Corps, there’s a position on CH-53 helicopters called “crew chief.” One of the jobs of the crew chief is to fix the helicopter while it’s flying. Businesses are like CH-53 helicopters and the operator is often running around its cargo bay with a wrench trying to keep it airborne.

In EOS, there are two leadership roles: integrator and visionary. This is because you can’t be tinkering on the helicopter and piloting it at the same time. The integrator is executing and the visionary is discovering value.

This doesn’t mean that every business needs to be a partnership or have a general manager. It just speaks to the nature of operating a business and the two competing needs of executing and moving forward.

In my business, we had a big problem this year with custom development projects going two to five times over our internal budget. We shield most of these costs from clients, but that comes to a cost to our profit.

As a natural problem solver, I can fix this. But the cost to fixing it is that I’ll take my eye off of value creation. As important, I have a team that delivers projects. By stepping in and implementing changes, I would actively dis-empower them. I’d train them that they’re not responsible for the results of the system that they operate. They’d also miss out on the opportunity to develop their own problem solving capacity and instead become more reliant on me.

It’s hard to restrain yourself from taking control. It’s slower to rely on others and often you pick up costs in the process because things don’t work right away. But if you’re the one accountable for problems in the business, the helicopter doesn’t move forward.


Featured image is the prototype CH-53. I was in a “helo” company in the infantry and have many memories of sitting in the cargo bay watching liquids drip from the ceiling as the helicopter made anxiety inducing sounds. Used under public domain.

Replacing Employees

I’m losing two team members this week.  One is quitting, the other is taking leave indefinitely.  

With the timing, I’d expect something like this to be an indicator of a problem in the business.  But because of the circumstances, I don’t think this is the case (yet.)

It’s a bit of a mixed blessing.  I hired both people this year and both needed more management to get them where we needed their role to perform.  In the meantime, I have still been carrying their cost.  With them out of the picture, it makes profitability easier.

Though profitability is easier, now our capacity has diminished.  And we still have a lot of work to accomplish before the end of the year.

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Self Employment

“If I don’t do it, it won’t get done right.”

This belief is a common constraining factor in many businesses’ growth.  There are variations of it, but the common thread is that you, the business operator, have to be central to the work being completed.

Only you can sell.  Only you can manage.  Only you can complete some complex task.

I organized a local business mastermind several years ago that included a smart fellow who ran an agency.  When we discussed his business model, he said that he had a team that provided services and that he would also occasionally do consulting work for their clients.  

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