Stop Putting Out Fires. Start Building a Business That Doesn't Need You To.

I talk to a lot of CEOs who feel like they’re the emer­gency response sys­tem for their entire com­pa­ny. Some­one makes a deci­sion; it goes side­ways; they get the call. A cus­tomer esca­lates; they step in. A team dynam­ic breaks down; they end up medi­at­ing it.

They’re the smartest per­son in the build­ing, so when things go wrong, it makes sense to bring them in. Except, over time, their avail­abil­i­ty for the urgent starts to crowd out their avail­abil­i­ty for the impor­tant. They’re man­ag­ing the build­ing that’s on fire instead of build­ing the busi­ness that’s meant to be on fire for growth.

I call this man­age­ment by inter­ven­tion. And it’s one of the most com­mon growth traps in mid-mar­ket companies.

The Prob­lem with Being the Fixer

Man­age­ment by inter­ven­tion can work for a long time. In the ear­ly stages, the CEO’s direct involve­ment in every­thing is often what makes the com­pa­ny so good. Cus­tomers feel it. Qual­i­ty is high. Stan­dards are enforced in real time.

But it does­n’t scale. As the com­pa­ny grows, the num­ber of prob­lems grows faster than any one per­son­’s abil­i­ty to solve them. The CEO becomes a bot­tle­neck; first to deci­sions, then to the cul­ture itself. Employ­ees stop mak­ing calls because they know the CEO will weigh in any­way. Stan­dards become infor­mal and incon­sis­tent — held up when the CEO is in the room, relaxed when they’re not.

More insid­i­ous­ly: the CEO stops hav­ing time to think. To plan. To build the rela­tion­ships and strate­gies that cre­ate the next phase of growth. They’re too busy hold­ing the cur­rent phase together.

In The 4 Forces of Growth, I called this the Prob­lem of Prob­lems — the way day-to-day issues qui­et­ly hijack the time and focus that should be going to growth. Man­age­ment by inter­ven­tion is what that looks like from the inside.

Cat­alyt­ic Mech­a­nisms: The Antidote

Jim Collins intro­duced the con­cept of cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms — tools or process­es designed to make the right behav­iours hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly, with­out requir­ing man­age­ment inter­ven­tion every time.

The exam­ples I love most are sim­ple and auda­cious. Gran­ite Rock gave cus­tomers the abil­i­ty to adjust their own invoic­es if deliv­er­ies were late or sub­stan­dard. That sin­gle mech­a­nism made every deliv­ery team hyper-account­able, because the finan­cial con­se­quence was imme­di­ate and vis­i­ble. No man­ag­er need­ed to police it.

Rack­space built ​“fanat­i­cal sup­port” into their oper­at­ing mod­el with a com­mit­ment that any unre­solved client issue would esca­late auto­mat­i­cal­ly — up to the CEO’s phone if nec­es­sary. No fin­ger-point­ing. No wait­ing for a com­plaint to work its way up the hier­ar­chy. Just built-in urgency and own­er­ship at every level.

At Lawrence & Co., we have our own ver­sion: if clients aren’t gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied, they don’t pay. It’s in our con­tracts. We almost nev­er need to invoke it. But the clar­i­ty of the com­mit­ment keeps our team focused on deliv­er­ing real val­ue, not just com­plet­ing engagements.

Build­ing Sys­tems Instead of Heroics

The shift from man­age­ment by inter­ven­tion to man­age­ment by sys­tem is one of the most impor­tant tran­si­tions a growth CEO makes. It means accept­ing that the busi­ness work­ing well with­out your con­stant involve­ment isn’t a sign that you’re not need­ed — it’s the goal.

Ask your­self: what are the three or four things in your busi­ness that cre­ate the most fre­quent fires? Now ask: what would have to be true about the sys­tem — the struc­ture, the account­abil­i­ty, the feed­back loop — for those fires to stop hap­pen­ing? That’s where your design ener­gy belongs. Not in the fire itself, but in the con­di­tions that keep cre­at­ing it.

The com­pa­nies that scale most smooth­ly are the ones where the right behav­iours hap­pen because of how the sys­tem is designed, not because of how often the CEO shows up. Your job, increas­ing­ly, is to build that sys­tem and then pro­tect the time to lead the things only you can lead.

Chal­lenge:

What’s one cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nism you could design right now that would thrill your cus­tomers and force your team to deliv­er at their best — with­out you hav­ing to be in the room? Start there. The best ones are often uncom­fort­able to com­mit to, which is exact­ly why they work.

Addi­tion­al Resources:

Arti­cles

• Stop Man­ag­ing by Inter­ven­tion. Start Man­ag­ing by Design
• Stop Being Chief Prob­lem Solver
• Mak­ing Your­self Use­less
• The Over­looked Build­ing Blocks of Growth
• How to Increase Veloc­i­ty in Your Team
• Do Your Core Val­ues Accu­rate­ly Reflect Your Cul­ture 

Book: The 4 Forces of Growth 

• 4 minute Overview
• 45 Minute Webinar
• Buy on Amazon

Book: Scal­ing Up

• 45 Minute Webinar
• Arti­cle: 10 Years After Scal­ing Up: What I’ve Learned About Growth

Book: Your Oxy­gen Mast First

• Assess your­self
• Resilience Webi­nar