I’m almost done reading Wisemans’s book “Multipliers”. In the seventh chapter, the author talks about how certain leaders invest in their people. I know I should be investing in my people, but how? According to Wiseman, it’s very similar to how venture capitalists invest in various businesses.
A trap that I find myself falling into is that of problem solver. When an issue arises and mangers ask me for a solution, I solve the problem. This in itself is a problem. When I solve the problem, it robs my managers the opportunity to solve it.
I can think back to a time when I was working as an analytical chemist. I worked for an environmental testing laboratory. We analyzed contaminated water, soil and air for various organic compounds. There was a shelf-life for these samples and they had to be analyzed within a certain period of time called the “hold-time”. If they weren’t analyzed within that time period, the results would be deemed useless. There was a significant cost to taking these samples, so we did whatever we could to analyze samples within the required hold-time.
On one occasion a particular group of samples were nearing their hold-time. I only had a day to analyze them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my instrument to cooperate. There was something wrong with the detector (it was a PID detector which excites the electrons in aromatic organic compounds like benzene).
I walked into my director’s office for help. He looked up at me and said, “I can’t help you, you’re going to have to figure it out”. I walked back to the instrument, obviously upset and tried to fix it. I could not. I walked back to the director’s office (who I knew could fix it) and asked for help again. He gave me the same reply. Now I was pissed. Didn’t he understand the severity of the situation? What if we missed the hold-time? I refocused my efforts. I realized he wasn’t going to help me; I had to figure it out on my own. After another hour or so, I figured it out.
What my director gave me that day was confidence. I could do it on my own. I didn’t need him to solve a problem. Now that’s powerful.
Wisemasn’s book makes the same point. Your job as a leader is to build a team of independent people that can solve problems WITHOUT YOU! That’s much harder than solving things yourself. That’s how you build a legacy.