Fire Yourself: The Goal is To Have Nothing to Do

In describing a lesson from one of his co-founders, Steve Case explained to the New York Times:

I remember Jim [Kimsey] saying once...that really the art is trying to set the priorities and assemble a team so you wake up in the morning and actually have nothing to do. It’s impossible to achieve, but it’s a good goal to have the right priorities and the right team in place so they can execute against those priorities. It’s almost the opposite of how I was approaching it.

This is one of the truest and most discomforting management strategies in a high growth organization. I've felt it for a while, but Case puts it into words perfectly. As we've grown from 15 to close to 300 employees, I've changed my tasks, what I focus on, and how I operate almost quarterly over the past three years. The overriding principal has always been to develop processes and empower the team in such a way that I am continually "firing myself" from my job.

For managers this can cause anxiety. They have a concern that if they hire people better than themselves and fire themselves, they will be out of a job. However, this is never the case in a growth organization. There are always new task and operations to be refined, and more importantly new opportunities that need to be tackled.

And so I think of the role of any manager within their division or team as follows:

  1. Do the process and things yourself first. There is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and actually doing the work. And this is key with each new process or task you define.
  2. Take the time to train others in the process even if teaching someone to fish is more time consuming than casting the rod yourself.
  3. Develop and coach the team on these tasks into being focused and self sustaining
  4. Fire yourself
  5. Repeat again

In fact, the most exciting and rare occurrence is a talented executive who has fired himself so successfully that he has free and unstructured time. A talented executive in this situation, no longer completely in reactive mode, has two choice:

  1. Nap
  2. Invent things that take the business to new levels of growth and excellence

I think for the most part, someone who has chosen to be in a startup and has the courage to fire themselves will choose #2.

Writing in The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success, William Thorndike explains:

[Warren] Buffett spends his time differently than other Fortune 500 CEOs, managing his schedule to avoid unnecessary distractions and preserving uninterrupted time to read (five newspapers daily and countless annual reports) and think. He prides himself on keeping a blank calendar, devoid of regular meetings. He does not have a computer in his office and has never had a stock ticker.

While Buffet, Berkshire, and investors are obviously quite different from operating executives, the wisdom is salient, even if an operator can only achieve it in a fractional sense.

And so I wake up each day aiming for the elusive goal of having nothing to do. That goal is unachievable, but like all goals, it is the top of the mountain and helps me to put one foot in front of the other in the most scaleable fashion possible each day.

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Photo: Iakov Kalinin / Shutterstock.com

Cori Sigetic

Safety Shoe Specialist at Grainger

10y

This is the direction I am aiming to take. I find it essential to play, learn, teach to others, and then move on to the next project. If your an innovative person with greating training and leadership skills, then that is how it should remain. It is a win win situation in my opinion.

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Jon Reily

Global Business Strategist | 2024 RETHINK Retail Top Expert | GenAI Ethicist | Ex-Amazon | Board Member | Civic Leader | Founder | Author | TV Pundit | Futurist | Amateur Radio Operator (KU5I) | Dad x 6

10y

This puts me in mind of a book called "E-myth". Go to a McDonalds and anyone can make a Quarter Pounder. That's been documented for years to be completely transferrable from one person to another. It's the same in business. I learn something, teach my team and then delegate the ongoing tasks. That frees me up to focus and learn new things. The company keeps moving, myself and other employees are learning new skills and new territory is being explored. That's how good things happen in business.

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Brandy Buttram

Vice President, Debt & Equity

10y

I think it's important for executives to "roll up their sleeves" to understand who it takes to get the job done as well! Many great points in this piece!

Walter Brown

Chief SEO Coding Wizard at Cape Cod Programming Services

10y

I like the napping part!

Richard Moormannn

Corporate Cybersecurity Strategist | vCISO | The Security Narrative | Security Compliance

10y

Great premise, requires the #leadership establish the corporate #culture to support it. Better still will be a full team of leadership doing the same, replicating the value added by each individual. Only works in a culture of 'abundance' vs. 'scarcity'. Great leaders push people stronger than themselves to the forefront. There is plenty of 'win-win' to go around. A Leader mentoring and modeling these skills is a rare find. But coaches have been saying this for years.

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