Think over-investing in time management is actually holding you back? You might be right! Building a strong, skilled team capable of tackling ambitious goals could be the key to unlocking significant growth, far beyond what simple delegation can achieve. This episode challenges the common time management trap and explores an alternative path to success – one that leverages your team’s full potential while freeing you to focus on strategic priorities. John outlines how investing in your team and yourself can lead to truly transformative results.
Welcome fellow veterans. From the tip of the spear to in the rear with the gear, I went from active-duty Infantry to reserve-component logistician. I’m your host, CEO, entrepreneur, trial lawyer, and Lieutenant Colonel Retired, John Berry. The military lessons that I learned helped me grow an eight-figure business that has maintained consistent annual double-digit growth, landing on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America every year for the past seven years, and has allowed me to continue to serve America’s heroes.
The buyback your time fallacy. One of my most costly mistakes was buying back my time instead of buying better talent. Unlike the military, as a civilian, you get to choose your team, and it’s not easy. Also, unlike the military, you won’t have a huge talent pool already in your organization. Most importantly, unlike an enlistment, an employment contract doesn’t carry the same weight as the UCMJ. You can never really lock anyone down, not even with golden handcuffs. I was making hiring decisions on what I could take off my plate, and I’d hire someone who was 80% as good as me at it. That was the advice I received at the time. Look, to grow, you just need to get stuff off your plate and work on the important stuff. My thought was that even if this person I hired wasn’t as good at me at that specific skill, I can focus on the things that the business needs me to focus on. Every time I hired, I downgraded a skill. If I hired someone to do my selling, I’d hired someone who could not sell as well as me because I thought if they could do it almost as well as me, that was good enough.
And then if I hired someone to do my social media, I hired someone who was even worse than me as social media because I just needed someone to get it out. The problem is that growing a great organization requires getting great people. And if you’re always buying back your time, you’re spending too little. You should be hiring skilled people to build your capabilities rather than less skilled people to take something off your plate. How do you get started? Well, you get started by buying the best people. Hire the best person you can find and take the time to find out what they want. How much money do they want to make this year? How much vacation time do they want? What tools do they need to do their job well? What training would they like to get to the next level? Then it’s your job as a leader to decide whether you are willing to make all of this happen for that team member. Then once you get this person on your team, make sure they don’t fall into the buyback your time fallacy. I get this all the time. As project creep grows, the executive team says they need an assistant but getting them an assistant may only lead to incremental growth instead of the exponential the growth that you promised your team.
Now, sure, sometimes all they need is an assistant, and they just need someone to help with low-level tasks. But you have to look deeper and determine whether that is what they really need. Imagine you hired a Marketing Manager to handle your digital marketing, traditional advertising and social media. At the end of the year, your social media is stagnant again and has missed the growth goals. The manager comes to you and says, I just need an assistant to help with the social media. We’re not hitting the targets. And if I could just get someone to help, we could get there. I just don’t have the time to do it myself. You then have to ask, do you not have the time to do it? Or do you lack the talent and experience to do it well? As a leader, you have to decide, do I buy this manager some time with a low-level assistant, or do I buy this person a capability, someone who can do social media even better than them? If you are a rapidly growing organization, your choice is the latter. The equation is not one of subtracting tasks from your plate but adding talent to your team.
Talent plus leadership equals growth. Now, will there be opportunities to buy back your time where you just need to take something off your plate because you could no longer budget the time to do it? Absolutely. And that can be beneficial. But as a leader, you must look at the entire organization and determine whether this is just a task you need to take off your plate or talent that you must grow.
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the veteran community, and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching @veteranled on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.
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