In our American rush to success we entrepreneurs err critically in trying to grow our businesses when in fact we shouldn’t grow our business at all; we should grow our people and let them grow the business.

This is difficult for many of us to comprehend because our entrepreneurial careers were often started as a one-man show where if you didn’t grow the business today you were not going to eat tomorrow. I get that. But as soon as you begin building a team it is important to shift a portion of your mental and time resources toward planting the seeds of multi-generational growth in your followers, rather than continuing to just plant your own personal crop for harvest.

I’m not saying you should send them to a conference or workshop. That can be fine, or not. I’m saying you need to begin teaching them how to replace you. You do want to be replaced, don’t you? You do want to spend less time doing things you don’t want to do and more time doing the things you want to do, don’t you? Then, you’ve got to replace yourself with someone who can do all those other things that you aren’t so good at or don’t enjoy.

Twenty five years into my career, I’m just now grasping this concept at a level where it is meaningful and makes a difference for me. (I’m a slow learner.) It’s always been a nice idea that sounded good in books and from business guru’s, but I didn’t have a clue what it really meant that I should do. Now I do, so I want to share that hoping you can accelerate your achievement and increase your difference-making sooner.

When I speak of growing people who are on your team, I’m talking first about being sure they understand their job responsibilities. This involves the implementation of SYSTEMS. A system is simply “the process by which do something in the same way every time.” Because we entrepreneurs are creative by nature we tend not to follow systems. We’re easily bored and so we may do the same task a dozen different ways to keep ourselves entertained. However, when handing responsibility to team members we mustn’t burden them with an obligation to be creative—which often leads to inconsistency in results. Instead we must say “This is exactly how I want this done every time. Follow this procedure and you will not fail.”

W. Edwards Deming taught that failure was almost always a result of a break down in a system, rather than a people problem. If you have a system and perform the same activity in the same way every time, you’ll be able to predictably produce consistent results. It is that resulting consistency from team members that is required for you to replace yourself.

Teaching people to run your system is the key to getting consistent predictable results. You do have a system, don’t you? Of course you do. You just may not have realized it and written it down. So begin thinking “systemically” and you’ll likely capture little systems and ways that you always do things in a certain way that you never realized. That is an AH HA moment and you are now a guru!

Teaching people to run a system may be the first step in their career with you, but in order to grow them you must also begin to teach them how to think. “Who am I to teach them how to think” you may ask? It’s simple, you are the teacher. You are the better thinker, aren’t you? If you aren’t then you’ve already found someone better than you to whom you might want to consider handing over the reins and getting out of the way. That’s the goal: for your thinking to become obsolete because you have replaced yourself with people who are better than you. Meanwhile, you know things they don’t, and they’ll never grow in their capability until you teach them what you know and HOW YOU THINK.

Often when we run up against an unusual situation or challenge I’ll say to a member of my team “Here’s how I want you to think about this.” If they are “dull-eyed” or too busy talking to listen, learn, and develop thinking skill it then tells me that they are ultimately not promotable.

It is a lot easier to bark out orders than it is to teach thinking. But if you are ever going to be able to step aside, let others lead, and develop unstoppable momentum you’ve got to help them develop critical thinking skill. Doing so first involves helping them see how you think, what process your brain goes through, and then how and why you achieve a conclusion. Then, it’s time to put their own brains to work by asking questions about their thinking and decision making—typically hard questions—and critiquing their answers and thought processes. If you’ve got a team member who can stand up to and shine under that scrutiny, then you may just have a winner!

How do you teach them to think?

I’ll tell you one of the methods we use. Our company has six core values. These aren’t just platitudes developed by executives in some group-hug-in-the-woods retreat experience. These are the core, killer, non-negotiables; inviolable principles around which we make all of our decisions. (if you’d like a copy of our core values, email me.)

Each month our training meeting (you do have regularly scheduled training meeting where you teach your team, don’t you?) is built around a particular core value. For example, in January and July we train on Core Value #1: It’s About the People Who Depend on Me. In February and August we’ll train on Core Value #2.

“Don’t you run out of training material if you keep talking about those same things over and over?” No. Not so far. It kind of reminds me of the preacher who preached the same sermon Sunday after Sunday. When his parishioners complained he said to them “When you prove to me that you ‘get it’ and start doing what I am teaching you in that sermon, then I’ll move on to the next one.” A good philosophy!

Fortunately, my team gets it. By going back to the same topics over and over and interacting over them together yet again, we mine more deeply each time for the nuggets and kernels of truth that change the way we think corporately and individually. It’s those thought shifts that grow people, and its growing people that will grow our business.

Tomorrow I’ll be teaching my team on Core Value #4 Initiative: Be Solutions-Oriented. I’m going to start by asking the question “Why do we humans tend to complain rather than to help?” I’m going into training not with answers, but mostly with questions. My team will come up with answers (solutions) and we’ll all be better-off for it.

Being an entrepreneur in these challenging times isn’t for sissies. It’s a lot easier to just take a pay check from somebody else who is taking all the risk. But entrepreneurs were born to do this. We’d pay for the privilege. Part of the opportunity is to develop people.

If we’ll develop them, grow them, and teach them to think better they’ll build our businesses for us and in the process they’ll build themselves. Their families, their communities, and their lives will be much richer for it. In the end, they’ll gather around our coffin and say “I am better, because I knew him.” That’s about the best we could ask for.