Never, ever, surrender to being a victim of circumstance. To do so is to admit defeat. Instead, create victory. If you can’t find the circumstance you want, create it.

Assume responsibility for your tomorrow. Create the outcome you desire. Start today.

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.

I was sitting on the porch (my specialty) drinking a Diet Coke and resting a bit from an intense few hours getting my garden in shape for Spring, when my friend Brett Godfrey gestures broadly and says “not everybody would ‘get’ this.”

It was a beautiful Spring day; the horses were grazing in the South pasture and the goats were frolicking in the front paddock. This is life as it was meant to be. (Deep good sigh!) 

But Brett is right, most people can’t conceive of why I’d be sitting here in muddy boots and Big Smith overalls with an aching back when an hour in my office working in the area of my unique ability would generate more revenue than my family will spend on vegetables in an entire year. Maybe I don’t get this either. Why do I do it?

Balancing work and leisure (yes, the garden is a leisure activity—-some people play golf, some people move rocks and dig in dirt—–both cause sweat) is an ongoing struggle for entrepreneurs. Nearly every day that I pause to play I find my mind drifting to “how much I’m worth an hour if I were doing something productive.” But the truth is: that’s weak thinking. Strong thinking realizes that life is about life, and work is just a tool to support life, and most importantly—leisure is productive.

Life is found in the simple pleasure of eating bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches when the pork came from your farm, and the lettuce and tomato grew in your garden. (In trying economic times there’s a certain confidence that comes from experiencing a meal that you grew totally on your place—slow food instead of fast food.) Life is in sitting on the porch in a rocking chair (yeah, we’ve got about ten big ones across the porch) visiting with your friends. In fact, that’s one of the best places to sit and talk with God. It’s also a good place to think.

Have you just sat quietly and done any thinking lately? What about talking to God? What about visiting with a friend? I won’t even ask where your bacon came from.

Dan Sullivan Founder of Strategic Coach (if you’ll contact them they’ll send you a free CD on the entrepreneurial time system) has taught me that in order to be most productive on what he calls Focus Days, I need to have a commensurate amount of Free Days in my schedule. A Free Day is a 24 hour time period where you do nothing related to work. Many of my friends in Strategic Coach have over 100 Free Days a year. That’s a nice balance of life and work.

I don’t have this subject all figured out yet, so I’m mostly just musing aloud. Though I am discovering that the more time I take off, and the more relaxed I am, the more productive I am on my Focus Days, and the more money I make. When Brett commented about people “not getting it” I promptly replied, “Yeah, I like money. But I like homegrown tomatoes, too.”

Take the day off. Go stick a shovel in the dirt.

I was recently a guest on Bryan Dodge’s radio show on WBAP in Dallas (see his website) after which we had great steaks at the Saltgrass Steak House (always a good place for a steak…..I eat there nearly every time I’m in Dallas) and talked for a few hours.

Our conversation was intense—go figure, Bryan is a wonderfully intense guy. At one point he said to me in his best imitation of an Old Testament Prophet, “A bigger wave is approaching. Be sure you step forward on the board.”

Huh?

“Step forward on the board.” He repeated.

The look of brilliant clarity on my face revealed my confusion, so he explained to me that he was speaking “surfer dude” language. Apparently he’s taken some surfing lessons and learned that when you are on a wave, transitioning to a larger wave, your intuition is to step backward on your board in effort to elevate the front of your board onto the top of the next wave. If you do this you’ll wipe out. Instead, you must act counter-intuitively and step forward on your board. The pressure on the front of the board actually causes the board to rise on the water. (About now all my physics friends are saying “well, yeah” and the rest of us are still going “Huh!”)

Bryan went on to admonish me “Don’t just lean forward. If you lean (meaning you haven’t really committed, you’ve just sort of paid token attention—-put in half-hearted effort) you’ll also wipe out. You must step both feet fully forward on the board.” You must commit to the next wave.

Interestingly enough this conversation came in the middle of one of the biggest weeks of accomplishment I’d ever experienced, both professionally and personally. An enormous period of accomplishment had led up to an incredibly huge week capped off by my dinner with Bryan. What he didn’t know though, was that I had said to a couple of key leaders on my team on more than one occasion that week “I feel like we are riding a huge wave and I just need to be sure and stay on the board. Don’t do anything stupid and wipe out.” Then Bryan comes along and without knowing of my wave metaphor says “Step forward on the board.”

That’s awesome. And if you think God doesn’t orchestrate things like that, we’ll then your brain is broken.

That conversation was two weeks ago. Every day since I’ve been thinking about what it means for me to step forward on the board.

What would it mean for you to step forward on the board? In what area are you holding back, slacking off, or hesitating? What big wave of opportunity awaits evidence of your commitment?

I’m convinced some people commit “surfer suicide.” They see the next big wave and it scares them because they know it is going to require them to get out of their comfort zone and develop new capabilities. So instead of stepping forward into greater achievement, they step back and “accidentally” intentionally wipe out.

Next time I see you will you be hangin’ ten? Or, are you going to have sand in your shorts?

Step forward on the board!