How to Delegate Without Micromanaging

Joe: And I literally on my calendar have three hours set aside every month to have hard conversations. I literally, it just says hard conversations. 

Brett: Which exact hours of the week are those for you? Just so I can, if I'm getting a call in those hours, I know. 

Joe: Oh, you got a call just the other week. I gave you a call on this.

Brett: I'm working on several businesses, including AOA and my own. I walk around all day and I'm, there's ideas, ideas, ideas, and I really wanna be able to delegate better. 

Joe: The job of the leader is not to take care of everybody. You can be supportive; you can be a coach. Oh, I know that person's got my back, but they're not saving me. They're not making excuses for me. 

Brett: So as we've been growing and the podcast has been growing, my software business has been growing, AOA has been growing, I'm stretching into my capacity to delegate, and I really wanna be able to delegate better. 

Joe: Yeah. What do you see as getting in the way of your delegation?

Brett: Yeah, there's a number of levels. First is distilling from strategy and vision into real action. The next is delegating and telling people what to do, and doing that in a way that's really clear, owning the thing that I need to be done, and also allowing there to be enough flex. So it's not micromanaging and it's not too hands-off. And then also following up and really building systems of accountability. 

Joe: That makes sense, yeah. So let's start with the first one. Can you remind us? 

Brett: Yeah, so it's distilling from strategy or vision into action. 

Joe: Yeah. That's great. 

Brett: So like I walk around all day and there's ideas, ideas, ideas. This could get done, this could get done. And maybe 10% of them actually make it into some kind of system and somebody actually hears about it. 

Joe: Yeah. So I think it's really important for leaders to be able to say, "This is the first domino." What's the one thing or the two things, and maybe the three things, but I like one. I try not to even go to two things that if I do that, everything else becomes easier or irrelevant. That's how I think about it. What's the one thing I can do, everything else becomes easier or irrelevant? 

Brett: Mm. 

Joe: And so oftentimes, say in a startup, if I've got 10 million in revenue and I've grown revenue by 5X, I can forget about a lot of other things. Like, a lot of other things can be going wrong, that going right, I'm okay. So you're looking for that. And once I have that right, then I have my ATM machine and I can go and fix everything else, and it's easier to fix it 'cause I have the money to fix it. So that's the way to think about it. Like, what is the, that one or two things? That's the meta level.

There's also that in every single one of the projects, right? So if the project is how do I get a sales story that works, well what's the number one thing to do there? It's probably talk to 10 customers, right? 20 customers, 30 customers, and iterate on the story. And that's more important than getting the marketing together, than, you know, making the story look pretty, than getting a designer and any of that other stuff.

So that's how you look at the world is like, "What's the first thing that I can do on every project?" You can use your team to, to do that, but oftentimes that is the leader's job. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: But as soon as you're clear that this thing needs to take action, it doesn't become your job anymore.

If you sit down on high and you say, "I've got this brilliant way of getting this thing done," and you go and tell your team, "Here's a brilliant way to get it done. Go do it," there's three problems with that. The first problem is they might not agree with you, and then they're not gonna do it. The second thing is that the best way to get it done for you is not the best way to get it done for your team, meaning that they might have other strengths and weaknesses, and their way of doing it for them will be better, or they believe in it more and therefore it's gonna have a better execution. And the third problem with it is that you are not taking into consideration all the details that they understand about that part of the work, right?

So you're on high, you have one viewpoint, they have another viewpoint, and if you're not taking both viewpoints into consideration, then it's probably not the best solution. So it's far better at that moment to say, "Okay, this is the most important thing. How are we gonna get it done?" 

Brett: And I see how that, like, how that applies to the project level as well as the company level. It also applies to the life level. 

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: You know, as I'm working on several businesses, including AOA and my own, there's also just life. Sometimes the one thing that needs to happen, like earlier this year we moved. The thing that needed to happen was settling into a new home with having stable stability to be able to do all the other stuff. 

Joe: Correct. How you get it done, now the mistake here is that a lot of people will say, "Okay, team, how do we do it?" And they think that means that they have to agree with the team, but they don't. So the critical piece there is that when you are asking the team how do we get this done?" You're really clear on what the criteria are for a solution. So we need to solve the sales, replicable revenue. We need to solve that. And what I know is that we need a sales cycle of under 10 months.

What I know is, is that we have to identify an ICP, our ideal customer profile. What I know is, that we need to be differentiated in the market. The story needs to be differentiated in the market. Whatever those things are that you know, and those are solution criteria. Now, you can debate the solution criteria, but at the end of the day, you get to choose what those solution criteria are.

So the team's job is to solve a problem within your solution criteria and to augment, improve, or debate the solution criteria. But the team's job is not to determine, not to be the end-all be-all of what the solution criteria is. So a lot of problems when people delegate, when they say, "Okay, I need you to get this done," well, they think these three things are important. You think these other three things are important. They go about it executing on these three things. You execute on these other three things. Nobody knows what's what And then you go and you say, "This isn't what I wanted." But nobody would've particularly known that. So the second step is to have the team solve your problem, but the solution has to be one that the criteria of which you agree with.

Brett: Yeah. Okay, so this, this is fascinating. There's a lot of really good tactical stuff here. I wanna, like, step back into the emotional here for a moment too 'cause there's a couple of things that I'm seeing where, you know, first, there's, if I assume that my way of doing it is the way of doing it, the right way of doing it, or if I think I need to decide for my team- 

Joe: Yeah

Brett: how to do it- 

Joe: Yes ... 

Brett: there's some way that I think I need to solve their problem for them. There's some way I think I need to take care of them even. So there can be a lot of, like, emotional patterning in that. Like, I'm in some way disempowering my team if I am taking upon myself and disempowering myself if I think I need to be the one to solve the problem. I'm trying to actually replicate 30 of me throughout a company rather than have me plus 29 other individuals with different strengths and weaknesses. 

Joe: Correct. Totally. And on a more technical level, tactical level, you're also not gonna get as good of a solution.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: So every one of their objections is a way to make the solution a little bit better, right? 

Brett: So it's a little bit of the, the no doctrine that we've talked about for sales, but it's actually within getting buy-in.

Joe: Correct. That's right 

Brett: ... in your team. 

Joe: That's exactly right. So the way that you create alignment isn't by convincing as much as it is by handling objections.

You want the team's objections, you want those objections to improve the solution, and then that creates the alignment. So one of the issues is that you, uh, like a lot of people, when they delegate, they'll walk in and they'll say, here's the thing, and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do this, and then we're all gonna do it.

Okay, everybody march in a line and let's go. And then why is nobody marching in the line? And it's because they might have even been convinced, you might have even convinced them, but it wasn't alive in them. They hadn't done the work. They hadn't actually lived the experience. They hadn't gotten to the conclusion themselves.

Brett: Which means they're gonna forget it in five minutes. 

Joe: That's right. That's exactly right. But if they have to wrestle with it. They have to say, "Okay here's the solution criteria. No, this is the wrong solution criteria. No, I don't like this, I like this," and they debate it, and they've contributed to the solution, then they're bought in.

If they've gotten to express all their doubts and had them listened to and reflected and solved, then they're far more gonna buy in to the solution and the execution of it. And again, oftentimes the way it seems to work, it's either I'm gonna tell you everything to do, or I'm gonna let you go off and do it yourself.

And both of those don't work. One is micromanagement and one is no oversight, and so there's no alignment. And the job is to get away from that binary thinking and to find a solution that allows people to have autonomy, to have a say, to hold the objections, make that into a better solution, and then have them execute on that. 

Brett: So another aspect of this that's super curious to me is how as a leader you can understand the available capacity, both in, like, the breadth of what someone's capable of, but also in the depth of just how much are they working on right now, especially in a very remote environment.

Like, AOA is very remote. My company is spread across the world, and it's always been a challenge for me to understand, could anyone in my team actually be doing more? Am I, like, overloading them if I give them more? Are they gonna say yes but then fail to deliver? And this is, I've often worked with people in different parts of the world that have had less exposure to, like, really just hardcore directness. 

Joe: Right. Yeah. 

Brett: And so this has been an interesting balance to play, and it's been really fun working in AOA and seeing how this works. But can you talk a little bit more about- 

Joe: Yeah

Brett: how as a leader you can understand the capacity of your team and work with that changing capacity?

Joe: Yeah. So I don't. That's my answer. I don't and I can't. So my strategy is very different. My strategy is make it really safe for everybody to be able to say no, make it an expectation that people say no. Make it so that everybody can delegate, so everybody can ask anybody else what to do. As a matter of fact, you know in our email system that everybody has to ask somebody to do something at the end of an email.

Brett: I hated that at first. 

Joe: I know, right? 

Brett: And I knew the moment I hated it, I was like, "Oh, this is exactly what we need." 

Joe: The thing. That's right, yeah. So everybody can say no, and then I just ask for whatever I want, and people will say no if they're at capacity. The other thing that's really important is that one part, 'cause you do work with people from different parts of the world where it's so rude to say no that you can't ever say no.

Brett: Saying no to authority can be- 

Joe: Yeah, exactly

And so, so with that one, I make it really clear that what's acceptable is to say yes and then tell me you're not gonna make it. What's acceptable is saying you're gonna do something and getting it done. But what is not acceptable is saying you're gonna do something and not doing it, and not bringing it up in advance, and 

trying to sweep it under the rug. That just can't be tolerated. Nobody wants to work with a team, in a team where handoffs aren't handoffs, so they're drops. Nobody wants that. "Hey, everybody, do you wanna work in a team where you can't count on people to do what they're gonna say they're gonna do?"

Nobody's like, " I do." 

And so you just have to make that really clear that that's just not how the team works, and if you work that way, this isn't the team for you. 

Brett: Yeah. That really speaks to also the what you said earlier about, like, I don't believe in management. Where management is a thing that needs to happen when there's not trust.

It's sort of like a training wheels or some sort of structure in place. If there's not trust, there is some sort of management to enforce or force things to get done. And that's what I think given the, the word management is all over the place that is the water that many people are swimming in, and it's really foreign and kind of bizarre to imagine a world where that's not the case, where that's not how things are done.

Joe: Yeah. Yes. I totally agree. And, and I think that a lot of that is caused by people not being really clear about what they want. So, as a leader, your wants are the wants that are most aligned with the company's wants. If your wants get met as the leader, then your team's wants get met, or most likely to get met.

If one person on your team's wants get met, then maybe your team's wants get met, but probably not. So there's something that happens where once you recognize that the whole team wants to win and that your wants getting met are what's gonna allow the team to win, then there's this like a natural flow that happens that is less control, less force, less management, and like a natural alignment can happen if everybody also feels listened to. Which is what that solution criteria methodology is all about, is letting people debate it. 

Brett: Yeah. And I think there's other layers or directions of the trust too, which is that somebody coming from, say, a work culture where if they said, "Yes, I can get this done," and then, "No, I can't get this done in time," got them berated then they're going to have decided that it's better to sweep it under the rug 'cause the risk is lower. And so they need to relearn how this works. So, like, trust has to be rebuilt. Like, trust with authority has been damaged in that sense, where you know, if I'm doing my best work, if I'm trying my hardest and being as honest as I can be, and that's resulting in me being attacked, then I'm gonna need to change my strategy to something a little bit more cards close to the chest. But then when you experience something different it takes a little while, sort of like the abused animal being slowly welcomed. 

Joe: It's true, but also not particularly your job. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Your job is to pick people who can work inside of your environment. It's not your job to heal people inside of your environment.

Like, you know that one of the things we do in AOA is we ask everybody if they feel like they become better people by working here. Really important to us because, one, if everybody feels like they're better people for working here, they stay. And if we've hired good people, we want them to stay. The other is that it just makes life more satisfying. It makes being here more satisfying, and that's all great. 

Brett: Yeah. And I can't deny that probably almost everybody working here has had some experience of, "Well, oh, I was expecting this, but actually something else happened, some option C happened."

Joe: That's correct. 

Brett: "And that increased my sense of trust" 

Joe: Yes. Absolutely right. And so some of that is gonna be natural. Like, there's no way somebody's gonna walk into our team and realize that you can't get in trouble until they've experienced that moment of like, "Oh, I'm not, I'm not getting in trouble. I'm just having a conversation with two people." However, if somebody keeps having that issue and they're, like, keep on hiding stuff, I'm sorry, like, it's just not a match for the team. 

Brett: Which is a sort of a kind of trouble, but it's not you're in trouble. It's, hey, like, something's not working.

Joe: You're not gonna get yelled at. You're not a bad person. It's just not a match. It's just like this isn't a match. Our team is very diverse, but it's not diverse in that. Yeah. We're, we're not defensive. We're not a defensive team. We're not a dumb team. There's some diversity that we just don't have, and one of those things that we are not diverse in, and this is, I think, really important for managing and delegating, is to be really clear on what you are willing to accept and what you are not willing to accept.

Brett: With the curation of what you're willing to accept- 

Joe: Yeah ... 

Brett: trust increases. As trust increases, all of the mechanisms of accounting for the lack of trust can fall away, and then you end up with not management, but teamwork. 

Joe: Not all of them. There's mechanisms that are really important. Like, if we look at your list, we got through, I think, one. What's the second thing in your list? 

Brett: Yeah, so the first on the list was strategy and vision into tasks. And you broke that down into prioritizing- 

Joe: Yes ... 

Brett: followed by the actual delegation of the task. And then after that, you have, you know, the tasks are delegated, and then you have tracking, accountability, feedback. Ultimately, tracking what's getting done and overall capacity. 

Joe: Yeah. So there's two important parts of accountability, and one of them is tracking. So that's where you actually need to institutionalize stuff, where if we say we're gonna do something, we're either gonna consciously not do it, or we're gonna get it done, or we're gonna be clear what's getting in the way and how we're gonna iterate to get it done. And to do that, you have to track, and I don't think there's any way around it.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: And clear prioritization of this is what's most important and this is what's not most important is also really important for the team. And so that kind of structure and infrastructure is really important. But then the second part of accountability is, when I say, "Hey, hold people accountable," we're gonna go hold people accountable. Most people think someone's gonna get in trouble. Like, that's what they think. Oh, holding accountable is equal to trouble. 

Brett: Or, or it's equal to control. Like there's a lot of times this happens, like, outside of business. Just like the idea of holding someone accountable is basically, "I don't like what that person did or they're scaring me, and I want to manage them." Sometimes there's something real there, too but I'm just saying a lot of times, like, the word accountability can kind of bring up hackles of like, "Okay." 

Joe: Absolutely. Exactly. Everybody wants a team that's accountable, but nobody wants to be held accountable.

Brett: Right. Yeah. 

Joe: So this is my version of what accountability is. My version of accountability is, what made you not get that done? What are you gonna do to get it done? What can I and or the team support you in, in getting that done? Excellent accountability is when I'm not doing it, when the team is doing it to each other.

Because in reality, and this is incredibly-- this is an advanced tool, but if you can create a structure, again, a structure where the team holds itself accountable, it is far better for the organization, because that's what's actually happening. Meaning, if you fail, you haven't failed me, the leader, you've failed the team.

If I'm playing on a basketball team and somebody misses all their three-pointers, you didn't fail the coach; you failed the team, you failed the fans, you failed everybody. So why is it only the coach holding you accountable? That doesn't make any sense. And so an accountability that works is when people are asked, "What happened? What are you gonna do differently? How can we help you?" 

Brett: Yeah. There's a lot of nuance in the tone. 

Joe: Yeah. There's a lot of nuance in the tone. 

Brett: Like, "What made that not get done?" could be really threatening. " What made that not get done?" could be a welcoming, an invitation for understanding.

Joe: Right. And sometimes it's gonna be, "Hey, I wanna know what m- makes that, that it's not, that doesn't get done. And I gotta say, if I'm paying you $200,000 a year, my expectation is that gets done." Like, the, that's way too much of an investment for me to have to track this or follow up on this. But it isn't have to be like, "Brr, you're in trouble." 

Brett: It's just, "Hey, the ROI on what we're doing here isn't working, and there's a better option. If I'm gonna take the better option, I'm gonna take the better option." 

Joe: Exactly. It's just, it's a very matter-of-fact situation, right? Because, again, the better option isn't just better for you, it's better for the entire team. Right? It's better for everybody who's decided to play the game with you. 

Brett: Which is kind of funny, 'cause there's that saying, it's not personal, it's just business." Which is pretty hilarious because the only thing that could make it that you would put up with something that is not not working in the organization, the only reason you would allow, paying somebody 200K who's not holding up their role is because something personal is going on.

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: Whether it is that you think you need to save them, or you don't think you deserve the A player or whatever it is. Or you think it's your fault as the leader, and you know, the nuance from, "It's my responsibility to make sure that the company is healthy," versus, "It's my fault. Everyone's failures are my own fault." 

Joe: Right. That's another one that I find gets in the way of people holding each other accountable is, was it the team, was it you, was it the other things, is it me?

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: It doesn't matter. Holding accountable, it's like, "This didn't get done. What made it not get done?" If you can be open to whatever that conversation is, that's great. The problem that I'll hear people talk about is like, "I don't wanna accept somebody else's excuses." It's like, great. Don't. Fantastic. But that doesn't mean you're not curious. It doesn't mean you're not full of wonder.

It doesn't mean, "Oh, what happened? Da, da." Oh, wait, those are excuses. I see that you're giving me excuses, and I can only tell you that that lowers my confidence. It would improve my confidence if you said, "I fell down, and I'm gonna get back up, and I'm gonna make this happen." That would actually improve my confidence. You give me 20 excuses, tells me that you actually think that the problem is really sexy, but solving it is somehow not for you. 

Brett: Right, which is actually really beautiful because you're also telling them how to win in the relationship. 

Joe: Exactly. 

Brett: It's not just telling them how to win in executing the objectives.

Joe: That's right. That's exactly right. So the core piece to delegation is you're being really human with them, but to be really human with them, you have to be really clear on what your needs and expectations are. What you want is, like, the most critical piece, and then you're listening to them, and you're, you're hearing, but you're not bending because you're taking care of them.

And so that's the other thing that seems to happen is that the job of a team member is to take care of the team. The job of the leader is to help the team members take care of the team. The job of the leader is not to take care of everybody. You can be helpful, but it is not to take care of them.

You can be supportive. You can be a coach. Best, you root for them. You're rooting for them. Like, "Oh, I know that person's got my back." That's fantastic. But they're not saving me. They're not making excuses for me. 

Brett: Yeah. There's also a really funny thing there where if you are, if you think it's your responsibility to take care of the team- 

Joe: Yes

Brett: you're never gonna do that perfectly or evenly. So there's always gonna be somebody who you're taking care of at the expense of someone else who's completely getting dropped. And it distorts the system to do that rather than, "Hey, here's the vision, here's our goals, here's what we wanna do as a company, and everyone's responsible for taking care of themselves, and we want everybody to get their needs met. And there's conversations and negotiations about that, and this is all in service of the thing that we're agreeing here, we're here for." 

Joe: Yeah, correctly. So if you were gonna bet on three teams, one of the teams was everybody's in it for themselves, the other team is that everybody's in it to help the other people, and the other one is everybody's in it for the team to win.

Which one are you betting on? It's pretty obvious. You're gonna bet on the one where everybody's focused on the team, helping the team, making the team win. 

Brett: Yeah, which included themselves and everybody else. 

Joe: Of course. Yeah. exactly. Yeah. It includes them, right. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah. But it's, the priority is important.

"Oh, am I doing this to help the team win or am I doing this so that I personally can get ahead?" And what I notice is that everybody wants a team that can be trusted. That if I went into 100 different people and do 100 different deals and said, "Who wants to work in a team where you can trust each other?" Everybody would raise their hand. 

Brett: And probably 30% of them would sabotage it the moment they had it. 

Joe: Yeah. It's true, and they would not be a match for our team, right? Exactly. So going back for a second, there's the structural piece of you actually have to track. Lots of methodologies for tracking. One that works for you, for your company is important. And then the next one is basically the accountability is having a hard conversation in an open-hearted way.

Not dropping your expectations, not accepting stuff that doesn't work, but being open-hearted. And I literally, on my calendar, have three hours set aside every month to have hard conversations. Literally, it just says hard conversations. 

Brett: Oh, wow. 

Joe: And I think about, "Okay, what are the hard conversations I'm not having?" And I call people up and have them. 

Brett: I really love that. 

Joe: Yeah. It's just part of what we call opening the drawer. 

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: It's part of our principles. It's what doesn't feel quite right, I'm gonna have that conversation.

I don't care if it's about you, I don't care if it's about me. All I care is it's not quite right, and it needs attention, and I'm gonna go put attention on it, and we're gonna have the difficult conversation, and we're gonna learn something. That's how I frame it. 

Brett: Which exact hours of the week are those for you?

Just so I can... If I'm getting a call in those hours, I know. 

Joe: Oh, you got a call. Just the other week I gave you a call on this. That was part of that, those hours. Yeah, exactly. So holding people accountable is basically, as a leader, is what's the hard conversations I'm not having? If you wait to have them, it'll have hurt the team. If you wait to have them you will be much angrier. But if you wait to have them, the relationship will have resentment in it. If you have them as soon as you see them, less resentment, less problems in the team, better execution. So I literally search for, like, what doesn't feel right, and how do I have that conversation?

Brett: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like the way that that ties back to the prioritization. It's like having the hard conversations is a very high priority for you. 

Joe: Very high priority. It's very much, to me, like you said, "Oh, I need to get my house in order." 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Like, if people aren't feeling connected... And the thing that prevents people from feeling connected is this.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Is not having those conversations on accountability. This doesn't feel good. This doesn't work. Those conversations aren't being had, then there's less connection, and therefore, people are, are less likely to actually do the things that they're supposed to be doing for the team cause there's resentment and all that stuff built up. And then there was another piece, right? I mean, the thing that's important is celebration. 

Brett: I was gonna say celebration, actually. Yeah. I was just like, well, the loop isn't closed until, like you've gotten to appreciate what's happened.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. So there's a tremendous amount of studies that show that the two things that motivate people more than money, more than a lot of things, is autonomy and appreciation.

Now, people like to get appreciated in slightly different ways. But everybody likes to get appreciated in some way, even if they don't let it in all the way.

And so appreciation is really critical. It makes people feel safe, and the thing about safety is I don't want people to feel safer than they actually are, right? Which I think is where safety gets dangerous. Everything's gonna be fine. No. No. No. No. Nope. The company's losing 20% of its business this year, everything's not gonna be fine. But what I know is that when people aren't scared, they learn quicker, they grow faster, they do better work 'cause they don't have as much cortisol. A little bit of urgency is fine from here to there, but you don't want a constant state of urgency. You're gonna get burnout, you're gonna lose great people, you're not gonna get their best work. And so really important, to give people the acknowledgement that allow them to know they're doing a good job so they can go, "Oh, I have confidence I'm doing a good job."

So appreciation is a really critical piece 'cause someone can say, "Oh, cool, I know I'm doing well." They're gonna take a little bit bigger of a risk. They're gonna be able to present themselves with more confidence, all these things that make them better at their job. And so I think that's a really important part. And then just the group celebration of a win. The thing, if you look at teams, when they win, they celebrate. There is this acknowledgement of we finished something and we did really well at it. And institutionalizing that is critical because why else? 

Brett: Well, there's a risk to institutionalizing it because, you know, there's appreciation and then there's the, like, cloying, employee of the month plaque. 

Joe: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't mean it that way.

Brett: When I hear you say institutionalize appreciation- 

Joe: Yeah ... 

Brett: what I hear you to mean is, like, really make it a part of the culture of the company where it becomes a source of it.

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: Not bake it into the employee handbook. 

Joe: Exactly. There will now be three minutes of appreciation. 

Brett: Right. I'm thinking of the show Severance. Where like people would just crunch numbers all day or press numbers and then finally get, like, a cheesecake.

Joe: Yeah. No, not that. Yeah, so I mean, you've seen how we've done it. We just, like, we just have moments of celebration and, and I make it a point, just like I make it a point to have the hard conversation, I make it a point to think about, on a regular basis, who am I appreciative of honestly that day or that week, and I call people and tell them, or I send a text or I do something where I'm like, "Hey, I'm really grateful for this thing."

Brett: Which is different from love bombing in a, like, trying to "Oh, I'm gonna appreciate you in such a way that you do more work for me." 

Joe: Yeah, yeah. I've never tried that. I don't think that would work very well.

Brett: I've seen it out there. 

Joe: Yeah, I've seen it. For me, it's like, oh no, what's the genuine appreciation that I have- for somebody? And even if they don't let it in, something registers in them where they're like, "Oh, okay, I..." There, there's a safety that comes with that. There's a confidence that can come with that.

What I notice is just, like, somebody playing pickleball or golf, you make a couple bad shots and you start beating yourself up, you're more likely to start, keep on making bad shots. Right? And so I don't want employees making bad shots, right? I don't want folks working with us making bad shots, and so how do you have people in the zone? So I think that all of that's really important as far as delegation. The other thing that's im- really important about delegation I think that we're talking about just generally is if you can do the job better than anybody that you've hired, then get rid of them and get somebody who, who you can't do the job better than.

And with that comes this recognition, oh, they know something that I don't know. I want them to do it because I know they can do it better than me, and they have wisdom that I wanna learn from. All of that is really critical in delegation, and if you don't have that in the delegate like, if you don't have that level of trust and/or if you wanna have all the control to make sure that it goes right 'cause nothing can be wrong then you're gonna have a problem. Which leads to that other very, very critical piece, which is you have to be good with people making mistakes. If you're gonna do great delegation, people will make mistakes. And if you're not good with that and you start punishing people for making mistakes, then you will never be a good delegator. 

Brett: And you also have to be willing to make the mistakes in the delegation. You need to be willing to make mistakes in the vision and the direction and the strategy. 

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And allow people to make mistakes. 

Joe: This is the thing that actually gets in the way of a lot of people being leaders. I see a lot of really competent people never become CEO because they don't wanna have that ultimate responsibility. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: But if you're delegating in the way that I suggest, where you're coming up with a solution criteria and you're getting other people to solve the problem, and you're doing the stuff on how you do accountability, all that stuff actually is deeply empowering for people. They feel empowered. And if they feel empowered, then they don't feel like you're responsible for their happiness.

They don't feel Like, we won, we lost. Mm-hmm. Not you won, you lost. Mm-hmm. And you're getting everybody else's opinion. And so there's this mythology of, like, as the leader, I have to be right.

I have to lead all these people into this place where we're going to the Promised Land. However, that's a very disempowering thing for all the people who are following. Whereas if it's, "Hey, this is where we wanna go. Do you wanna go there? You do wanna go there. Okay, how are we gonna get there? 

Here's what I know. Okay, this is the plan. Who's responsible for doing this? You're responsible for doing this. I'll take care of this. You all take care of that," then who failed at getting to the promised land?

So there's a mythology of, like, the responsibility of the leader. They're just playing a role. The leadership is just a role inside of a team. The coach is a role. The center is a role. The guard is a role. Everybody needs to play their role for the thing to work. 

Brett: So one more, one more thing I wanna address here is just I wanna talk about this in terms of scale. So it feels very different when you're working in, say, like, a partnership versus a team of six versus a team of 10 versus a team of 30. 

Joe: It is different, yeah. 

Brett: And how about a company of 100,000 people? What do you have to say about, like, the larger scales here, or just how this works differently across scales?

Joe: Yeah, or, like, even a country, right? So yeah. It's a great question. There's all sorts of tools. I could literally talk for, like, two hours, three hours on all the tools to change cultures inside of a large organization, but there are, I would say, three things that are just easy to hit on.

The first one is you have to have a way to measure the culture.

You have to have a way to run experiments on the culture and measure the results of that experiment so you know if you're having any impact. So typically, people will do a cultural thing where they'll say, "Okay, we're gonna do this new perf," which is a performance review, or a new KPI s format, and we'll, whatever, we'll do bonuses a different way, and it'll change the culture, but they don't know if it actually did. Like, they're just kinda listening to the ground, and so you need some way to measure what's gonna happen. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is institutionalized change is far more effective than one-on-one intervention or team intervention, meaning coaching is useful, but that's one-on-one intervention.

What we do by taking a team and doing an off-site is can be effective, but it's not, it's not, like, institutional. But the way that you do action needed on the end of an email so that nobody gets to faff in an email, or the way that you hold accountability or how you live your principles, owning your principles, anything that's institutionalized.

This is the way we run meetings. this is the hour that nobody gets to communicate with anybody else, so you just get to do work like, all those things have a bigger influence on culture than one-on-one intervention.

The other thing, the third thing is consciousness of the leadership is usually reflected in the organization. So especially if the leader's been there for a while. So I look at our company as a reflection of who I am. Like, I can see myself in the company. I can see my shortfalls in the company. I can see my strengths in the company. So on some level, just your consciousness, taking care of your own consciousness will affect the culture of the company. Like I said earlier, it's like a spit at the top is a waterfall at the bottom. 

Brett: Yeah, it affects who you hire, who they hire. It affects what kinds of information flows through. Exactly. Yeah. 

Joe: Exactly, yeah. Information flow, decision-making processes, meeting culture, all those things are institutionalized, and they're gonna affect culture.

So that's another, like, really critical piece. Yeah. But there's, as far as the tools, there's literally hundreds of tools that you can experiment with, but if you don't have a way to measure your experiments, it's never gonna work. 

Brett: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like the same thing in a life. You run all kinds of experiments here in the company and in individually, and set your parameters, measure your experiment, and iterate. 

Joe: Iterate. That's it exactly. And you can do that with culture, but what most people do with, like, culture is, "I don't know what to do." 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Or, "I tried something, and it didn't work." 

Brett: Which circles back to the delegation bottleneck that I opened this with is for myself, so much of what has been in the way of delegating has been some sort of perfectionism or fear of failure or fear of, like, failure in the delegation process such that someone's time feels wasted, or they feel put upon. And as a result, you know, my company has become a reflection of myself, and so as I have been going through and doing this work, my company has changed. And that's also happened as a result of being here. Working here has done a lot for my delegation and decisiveness. And to circle it all the way back to appreciation, I am deeply appreciative for that experience. 

Joe: Yeah. Thanks, man. I'm really appreciative. I really love working with you. So it's really good that way. Cool. 

Brett: Well, thank you, Joe. 

Joe: Thank you. 

Brett: Really enjoyed the conversation and I can't wait to iterate. And onward and upward.

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