a requirement for progress in your organization

In my recent coaching, the biggest thing executives are missing is the notion that progress for their organization requires everybody continuing to level up by taking on new and bigger responsibilities.

The theory of why you delegate something doesn't create urgency for these executives. For many of them, delegation is a transactional thing. If there's somebody who can do something instead of you, maybe it's worth them doing that. You use units of their bandwidth to free up some units of yours. The analysis of that equation sort of stops there for most people.

This narrow arithmetic obscures what should be a general rule: everybody in the organization, across the entire org chart, should be increasing their capacity to do more. And though that does temporarily present you with the scary reality that you might not be needed, the truth is quite the opposite. This universal increase in power and responsibility-taking is what allows you, the executive, to 3x your impact. And that is the thing that will accelerate the organization the most.

When you go from being an executive who has to do ground-level things in a shoulder-deep way to an executive who simply finds themselves without those things to do—that is when a good executive is going to have the greatest impact on the organization. That good executive understands the vision, understands the bar, and understands the possibilities and directions the organization might seize next. The good executive, who has applied the general rule of delegation I’m talking about here, gives these things their full attention.

This is secretly what everybody at the organization wants. I say “secretly” because we have this basic understanding in the US, at least, that what everybody wants from each other is proof that they're working hard enough. When you ask an executive to delegate more, you threaten their ability to prove that they’re the hardest working.

Leaders would do well to release their grip on all the tasks that others can do. Instead, they should hold fast to the idea that their organizations will never become what they need to, unless everybody else takes on the things that the executive currently does. This frees the executive to do other stuff — the stuff that only they can do.

-ben