Every day, a small Ant arrived at work early and starting work immediately, she produced a lot and she was happy. The boss, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision. He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce more if she had a supervisor!

So the lion recruited a cockroach who had extensive experience as a supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports. The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system. He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports. He recruited a spider who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The Lion was delighted with the cockroach’s report and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and analyze trends so that he could use them for presentations at board meetings. So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and recruit a fly to manage the IT department. The Ant , who had been once so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time.

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked. The position was given to the Cicada whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, whom he had brought from his previous department to help him prepare a work and budget control strategic optimization plan.

The department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset. It was at that time the cicada convinced the boss, the Lion, to start a climatic study of the office environment. Having reviewed the charges of running the ant’s department, the lion found out that the production was much less than before so he recruited the Owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions. The Owl spent 3 months in the department and came out with an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded that ” The Department is overstaffed..”

Guess who the lion fired first?

Most people have a certain image in their minds when they think of a founder/CEO.

They picture the boss in the corner office, standing behind her desk, gazing out over the city. They imagine someone calling all the shots, and everyone relying on their insight and wisdom — a visionary who is never wrong. They fear being grilled, berated, and guilted into working long hours — inevitable top-down command-and-control.

When startup founders take this approach today, they fail.

The more involved you are with the day-to-day work, the more difficult it will be for you to scale, and the less likely it is that your company will succeed.

As the founder/CEO, you have one job: Look at where you’re spending your time, then fire yourself from that position.

Here’s what I’ve learned that makes this possible:

1. Perform The Role, Then Hire Someone Better

The best founder/CEOs are jacks-of-all-trades.

Their value doesn’t come from doing one single thing exceedingly well. It comes from being able to perform an array of things fairly well, and then having the awareness to find someone better than them to take over those responsibilities — allowing them to move on to the next most-important role and the next most-consequential hire.

2. Hire People to Help you Hire.

If you’re doing this well, you’ll quickly reach the point where the company will outgrow your own ability to “chair hop.”

Instead of filling one role at a time, you’ll be filling three.

3. Bring Top-Down Context, Not Top-Down Decisions

As the founder/CEO, you are in the single position that can see across roles, across skill-sets, across your market, and across your customer base. That is your unfair advantage. You aren’t better than your team, but you certainly have more context than your team. How can you use this to empower them?

I like to picture my org chart upside-down. They don’t report to me. I report to them. What do they need to succeed at their roles? Context to prioritize. Context to make decisions. Context to know when to push for more resources, or when to make-do.

All in all, so many founders forget that the ultimate goal is to make themselves completely unnecessary to the day-to-day operations of the company.

The irony of course is, as a founder, you’ll never be completely unnecessary to the business. In constantly trying to “fire yourself” from different roles, the company will continue to grow. As it grows, new responsibilities and challenges will arise, and you’ll have to repeat the process of getting people up to speed all over again.

But that’s the point.

​Source: Jeff Seibert. Read more by clicking at the image below.