Everyone is smarter than you.

Equally important is that everyone is smarter than you. The trick is to create an atmosphere that allows the discovery and utilization each of your team members’ hidden talents. The benefit for them is that they get to have a job that is more interesting and fully engaging. The benefit to you is obvious. At one startup company, one day in particular we had a perfect storm. We had so many fires to put out that we were concerned that we might not get to all of them. Every manager had their hands full. Every manager already knew time was critical and stepped up automatically to get the job done. That day we discovered untrained, and left to do on their own, each had a talent for figuring out sticky issues and a temperament that allowed them to do this under extreme pressure…we won the day.

Be a discoverer of people’s talents. Communicate your vision to them and then let them work on the how-to-get-that-done part. When I hire well and communicate my vision to the team, I am working to create a world that doesn’t require my presence.