Leadership traps and growth strategies
Why is your indispensability the biggest barrier to scaling and how can you turn your company from a bottleneck to a growth engine?
Estimated reading time: 7-10 minutes
The two roads
Imagine two company directors. Let's call them Peter and Anna.
Peter is the classic leader trap prisoner. He's the first one in the office and he turns off the lights at night. He's on the copy of every email (just to keep him in the picture). All decisions go through his desk. If Peter goes on vacation, his company goes on life support. Peter is proud that life stops without him. He feels it's the measure of his importance, when in fact it's his prison.
Anna is often not in the office. Sometimes she is out for strategic meetings, sometimes she is picking up her child from nursery school. When Anna's not in the office, her company doesn't slow down. In fact, cases and projects are moving forward, clients don't even notice her absence and are just as satisfied. Anna is the growth strategy has chosen.
Peter has a (manually) controlled, micro-managed and, although probably very well paid, but extremely stressful job / job. And Anna has a business that is not entirely dependent on her, and she can step off the merry-go-round for a while if she feels like it, or even sell her company because she has built something that works.
A Latest CoachLab experiences and the international literature (e.g. The Founder's Dilemma) also show that most managers start as Peter, but need to become Anna for their company to survive growth. The gap between the two is not a lack of hard work, but a fundamental shift in strategy.
The „bus factor” and the ego of the driver
There is a morbid but very useful concept in software development: the „Bus Factor” (Bus factor). This number shows how many key people would have to be hit by a bus before the project would crash.
If the number in your company is 1 - and that one person is you - you are not safe, you are in danger.
A classic Harvard Business Review study, the The Founder's Dilemma (The Founder's Dilemma) highlights exactly this: the biggest pitfall for entrepreneurs is having to choose between control and growth. As long as you control 100%, your growth has a biological limit: your time and your energy.
Many people believe that the delegation of control loss of control. But in fact the control and thus sharing responsibility.
Insecure, inexperienced or novice managers tend to believe that they are the best and the brightest in the office or even in the whole company.
If you're the smartest person in your company, you've hired the wrong people, or worse, you're not letting the right people flourish.
Urgent vs. Important: The price of attention
Why do we get caught up in the micro-genome? Why do we feel that we have to do everything?
The answer is often physical or biological. When we „put out a fire”, when we solve a sudden problem, our brain produces dopamine. We feel like a hero. We feel useful. Conversely, writing a working model or a process description or training a colleague can feel tedious and the results are only visible later.
According to Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous matrix - a Clumbia University aynaga ; managers should spend most of their time in the „Important but Not Urgent” quadrant. This is strategy, system building, team development. In contrast, the CoachLab based on the experience of 80% of Hungarian SME managers spend their days in the „Urgent and Important” (firefighting) or „Urgent but Not Important” (working for others) boxes.
The biggest trap of a manager is to control everything. When your presence is the key to day-to-day operations, you are the bottleneck in the system. But when you distribute decisions, information and responsibility - the system becomes faster, more stable and more scalable.
The Competence Trap: Linear vs. Exponential Growth
In our work at CoachLab, we identify again and again a paradox that we at „Competence Trap” we call it. This is the most dangerous trap a talented leader can fall into.
What is it about? It's about. you're too good in your profession. Since you write the best copy, design the most beautiful house or close the most efficient deal, it seems logical that you should do it. But that logic is the death of growth. If the best operational person in your company is the CEO (that's you), then your company has no CEO.
A growth strategy does not mean taking on more. It means taking it to the next level.
The difference between the two mentalities is huge:
- The linear growth trap: If you want to earn more, you work more. That's the freelance mentality. The ceiling is your 24 hours.
- The strategy of exponential growth: If you want to earn more, you build better systems that multiply other people's time. That's the entrepreneurial mentality. There is no ceiling.
Think McDonald's. They're not one of the world's most successful companies because they make the world's best burgers. It's because they are system that an 18-year-old student can use to produce the same quality from Tokyo to New York.
(Not to mention the fact that the „Meki” business is not really hamburgers, but real estate, but that's another topic, maybe we'll write about that when we get people interested. 😉
But to return to the analogy: You don't have to flip burgers. You have to design the „kitchen” where others cook. Until you make that shift in your mind, any marketing campaign you launch will only increase chaos, not revenue.
The Paradox of Systems: why structure is the key to freedom?
What does this freedom look like in practice?
- Automation of knowledge transfer: When a new colleague arrives, it's not you or a key member of staff who has to sit next to them for weeks. With the help of a well-constructed digital knowledge base (Wiki, video training materials), he or she will learn the basics on their own. You are mentoring, not explaining the alphabet like a school teacher.
- The elimination of decision fatigue: One of the most important forms of freedom is mental freedom. Without systems, your day is spent firefighting and micro-decisions („How much discount can we give?”, „Who approves this post?”). Having policies in place gives the team a decision crutch, freeing you from the daily grind and focusing only on strategic issues.
- Quality independence: Your customers get excellent service not because you're having a good day, but because we've coded the standards into the company's „DNA”. The process guarantees results, whoever does the job.
- Scalability without stress: The biggest barrier to growth is usually the capacity of the driver itself. In a structured company, if twice as many orders come in tomorrow, the organisation does not collapse under the strain, but simply „shifts into higher gear”. The structure allows growth to bring not chaos but proportionate profit growth.
- Error as a system development tool: In an unstructured company, failure is a „sin” followed by scapegoating. In systems thinking, a mistake is valuable feedback. The question is not „Who messed up?”, but „Where is the flaw in the process that allowed this to happen?”. This creates psychological safety in the team, which is essential for proactivity.
- Automatic operation: Projects do not stop in your absence. With clear lines of responsibility and „scripted” start-up protocols, the machinery keeps moving without you.
- Creating marketable goodwill: It is cruel but true: a business without a system is really just a job created by the owner, without which it is unsaleable. Systems (processes, documentation, automation) transform your business into a real, marketable asset. Investors don't want to buy your personal genius, they want to buy a functioning machine that predictably generates profit.
- The possibility of conscious improvisation: This is perhaps the biggest paradox. You can only improvise really well and safely (e.g. in an unexpected market situation or crisis) if your core business is rock solid. If the „hinterland” is in order - accounts are going out, customers are being serviced - then the manager has the free capacity and courage to engage in creative, riskier manoeuvres, because he knows that the funds will not collapse in the meantime.
It is a mistake to think that systems kill creativity. It's the other way round: systems create a safe space for creativity. If your colleagues don't have to worry about „how to invoice” or any other „routine” or clearly defined, describable task, how it works, how it can be done (because it is written down), they can focus their energy on real value creation, innovation and a deep understanding of the customer's problem.
Sabotage or Strategy?
There's a hard truth you have to digest. In the past, and even now, I talk to and often work with many people, leaders and entrepreneurs as a coach, who don't outsource their tasks, don't build systems that work well on their own, because cannot believe it, and are rather sure that without them, this operation would not be of a sufficient standard, but above all would not be viable.
In doing so, we are enemies of ourselves, our employees and our company. It is in fact self-sabotage. You sacrifice the future of your company to protect your ego.
A CoachLab's research highlight that one of the most important factors in employee satisfaction is the autonomy. If you decide everything, if you always have their backs, you're not only burning yourself out, you're driving your best people away. They're the ones who are told what to do. The talented people who want to create leave.
A leader who is able to incorporate his own knowledge into others is able to grow. Anything else is just unnecessary spin that seems useful and sabotages your own work.
The good news is that it can be learned
When I say your company has to function without you, I'm not saying you're redundant. I'm saying your role needs to change.
You need to move from the role of operator to that of architect.
The real challenge is not implementation, but system building: what is the process that guarantees results without your active involvement?
In conclusion - Leadership traps and growth strategies
Simon Sinek once said: „Leadership is not a rank. Leadership is a decision. It is a decision about how you care for those to your left and to your right.”
Taking care does not mean doing the work for them. It's about giving them a system they can feel safe in and the tools they need to succeed.
If you have one standard, repetitive task on your list as owner, you still have work to do. But here's the good news: it can be learned even if you think it's unthinkable right now. I've done it, others have done it, many have done it. You can do it too!
Are you ready to kick yourself out of the operational side of your own company and start working for the COMPANY, not the TIME?
Frequently Asked Questions about System Design
I already work 12 hours a day, when would I have time to produce process descriptions and checklists?
It's the classic „woodcutter's paradox”: I don't have time to sharpen the axe because I have so many trees to cut. The reality is that no time not to do it. A CoachLab suggestion is gradual: don't try to get the whole company on board at once. Start with the simplest, most frequently repeated task. The next time you do it, video your screen (e.g. with Lom) and narrate what you're doing. Give this video to an assistant or junior colleague to describe step by step. This way the documentation is not extra time, but part of the job.
I have no money to hire expensive experts and senior managers to run the company. What should I do?
This is a common misconception. The point of schemes is precisely to reduce the need for „geniuses”. If you have a great process, a checklist and a good training system, an enthusiastic, capable junior or senior colleague can do to 80-90% what only you could do (I know, sad news, but true 🙁 ). A good system can enable average people to achieve excellent results. You don't need to look for „superheroes”, you need to build processes.
If I hand everything over to others, won't I become redundant in my own company? What will I do all day?
This feeling is quite natural, but it is your ego's fear, not reality. When you step out of operations („work in the company”), you can finally start to focus on strategic growth („work on the company”). Suddenly you have time to explore new market opportunities, forge strategic partnerships, build company culture or dream up the next big product. You're not becoming redundant, you're moving up a level: from the engine room to the captain's bridge, where you can finally see the horizon.
