The flip side of yesterday’s question – what if that step into the unknown works?
What will Disappearing from my business as a Boss do to my business? What will it do to my role in that business?
Will the people we serve think differently of me? Will my team think differently of me? Will my peers think differently of me? Will I think differently of me?
Will I like what they and I think?
I can’t answer the last question, but here are my answers to the others:
Your business will become easier to run, because you won’t be the only one running it.
It will become easier to grow, because with clear Roles to play and a Customer Experience Score to follow, people can be more productive at what matters to the business – delighting your customers.
It will become more profitable, because everyone is clearer about the unique Promise you offer, and is able to keep that Promise more efffectively and efficiently. Without the need for management overhead.
Your role in the business will change. You’ll no longer be the only Boss. Your team becomes the Orchestra, which you still conduct, but which you no longer have to manage. You’ll become the Composer, whose vision is embodied in everything the business does. That doesn’t just give you time to be physically away from the business, it also gives you time to be mentally away from it too. To think about what else you could do for the people you serve, and where else you could be doing it.
The people you serve will love you even more than they do already, because they will see that everything you do is built around them.
Your team will love you more than they do already, because they can see that you are giving them the room to grow – more agency, more mastery, more autonomy. A clearer purpose to their work, a more clearly defined community of like minds, and the increased status that increased responsibility brings. And, being used to running the business, even while you’re still there, will make them ready and willing to buy it from you when the time comes for you to leave in earnest.
Your peers will think differently of you. They’ll wonder how you manage to grow your business, increase your profits and still take time out for holidays, weekends, and evenings. They’ll be jealous. Hopefully some will want to emulate your achievement, and join the Club.
You’ll think differently about yourself. You’ll feel more successful, more relaxed and ironically, more in control than you have been in a long while.
Will you like that?
I hope so.
None of this happens immediately of course, you’re not a magician, and neither am I.
But you will see it start to happen from the moment we start working on it.
Discipline makes Daring possible.