Seven Years On, Reflections on Your Oxygen Mask First: Make Yourself Useless

“The growth and devel­op­ment of peo­ple is the high­est call­ing of leadership.”

-Har­vey S. Fire­stone, founder, Fire­stone Tire & Rub­ber Company

At a very prac­ti­cal lev­el, it’s a CEO’s job to help the amaz­ing peo­ple you’ve hired to become great leaders.

And, in dis­cus­sions with hun­dreds of exec­u­tives about this chal­lenge, it’s clear that for most peo­ple this is often the hardest.

Watch the Video: Make Your­self Useless

An Invest­ment in Your Team

Only with an A Play­er team in place can a CEO spend time focus­ing on growth and look­ing for the next place to go, and to win and thrive as a business.

And that requires an invest­ment of time to hire, teach, coach, chal­lenge and pro­vide feed­back to peo­ple, to give them the skills and con­fi­dence to man­age day-to-day busi­ness with­out you.

But, some­times, a CEO who doesn’t want to go through the pains of hir­ing some­one new, decides to con­tin­ue with the dev­il they know. Or they get trapped hand­hold­ing aver­age play­ers they feel loy­al to, either because they’ve worked well togeth­er in the past or because they care deeply about them.

Stay tuned for more about this in my new book, as I talk about what I call the prob­lem of pond hock­ey. It’s about the way that we try to work with who­ev­er shows up at the pond to play ver­sus think­ing more like an NHL coach who is con­stant­ly scout­ing for only the best talent.

A Cat­a­lyst for Change

This chap­ter has often been a cat­a­lyst to show CEOs and exec­u­tives we work with, who see that it’s pos­si­ble to make the shift to become much more strate­gic, in their role, with a lot less time spent on oper­a­tional issues because their team is so capable.

And CEOs and exec­u­tives, who have become notably more effec­tive at mak­ing them­selves use­less, are those who accept noth­ing less than an excep­tion­al A Play­er team.

A great exam­ple is Amish Shah, CEO of Kem Krest, who real­ized that, for him to be much more use­less in his orga­ni­za­tion, he need­ed to make some notable changes on his exec­u­tive team. Here are links to:

• The Kem Krest case study
• My inter­view with Amish Shah.

The Chal­lenge

• Are at least 80% of your direct reports A Play­ers in their role and a delight to work with? If yes, you should celebrate.
• If not, what can you do to build the team you real­ly want

Your Oxy­gen Mask First Resources

• Page 140: Kevin’s Per­for­mance Rat­ing Sys­tem to get clear on where your team is today.

Oth­er Blogs

• How are You and Your Orga­ni­za­tion Doing? A Check-Up from the Neck Up
• Do You Cre­ate an Envi­ron­ment of Autonomous Accountability?
• Do You Have a Who Problem?

Old­er Podcasts

• Jim Collins’ 6 Char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Right Peo­ple in the Right Seats
• How to Deal with an Under­per­form­ing Executive

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achiev­ing lead­ers to have it all – a great busi­ness and a reward­ing life. Con­tact us for sim­ple and impact­ful advice. No BS. No fluff.