A New Adventure: How A Newborn Taught Me the Most Valuable Lesson in Management

On May 1st, 2024, my wife and I welcomed our son Calvin to the world and true to the cliché, life changed overnight.??

Before his arrival, we received great advice from all different walks of life about having a child. One particular piece of wisdom was to take as much video as you can. In the spirit of recording as much as possible while it's happening, I wanted to start a series of articles reflecting on business, life, and the intersections between. While the idea is not novel, I hope you find the same value I will when meditating on the changes.?

A great clickbait title for this article would be "How Having a Baby Grew My Business to the Next Level". In a sense, it truly did as it forced my hand to delegate to the team I've hired around me. Business Owners go through constant change over, adding new responsibilities and shedding old ones. While adding new to-do items is so easy to do, letting go is leagues more difficult. The letting go and delegating I'm finding is the true difference maker for transforming a business. As Shane Parrish of Farnam Street often repeats, it is simple but not easy.??

Having a baby forced my hand in delegating day to day tasks to my employees. Fortunately, they were ready for the challenge as months of training, debriefs, and trial runs lead up to the event. The crowning moment was on a phone call with a longtime client when I returned where he told me “Your guys were proud to step up and handle the issues while you were away." A fantastic achievement if there ever was one.?

So how did we get to the point of capability? It starts with training and developing policies well in advance.?

The first thing we do for new employees is go through a qualification process. I spare the gory details, but we list out the responsibilities for the position based on the different tools and zones they're responsible for. This goes way beyond the job description. We take each tool, like our ticketing system or a specific security program, and run through each of the practical questions the employee could run into. It takes 15 minutes to fill up a blank sheet of paper with 80% of the possible practical questions one could have on the topic. The 80/20 rule is your friend when coming up with "what should someone know about 'blank'?".??

It's not enough to write down the questions and leave it to the employee to answer on their own time. Even if one hasn't written a procedure, policy, or how-to on the project, one can talk about the subject for 15 minutes or walk through the process in real time. The next key part is putting the 15 minutes on the calendar every day or every other day during the employees first 90 days for reviewing the answers to the how-to questions and then having the employee demonstrate it back. Don't skimp on this time! While providing a degree of "figure it out" time is helpful, I recommend doing it while they're answering the question. Allowing an employee to "squirm" in the safe environment of one-on-one training is the perfect space to do it in.??

So now you've fleshed out the how-to's and had them perform the tasks. The next step is daily debriefs for any unique challenges. If the training covers the 80%, the daily reviews cover the last 20%. It also helps to foster a sense of teamwork as people share the how-to's and the meetings are not wisdom cast down from on high by a manager. I give huge credit to Jocko Willink and Extreme Ownership here: allowing the employees to lead the meeting gives them control over their education. The owner is there to play referee.??

?We've got the bases covered for how to do the work, now comes the part where we reward and provide incentives. We use a system called CrewHu that handles our client reviews but also allows for employees to recognize one another with real dollars they can use towards gift cards and other rewards. While the verbal "thank you" is always appreciated, nothing like cash to make the situation sweeter. Peer to peer recognition is huge for fostering a sense of teamwork.??

The final piece is to give them a high degree of control for decision making. I stole from Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Work Week where he allowed customer service reps to make financial decisions below a certain dollar amount without interaction with Tim. We've done the same here for allowing purchases of just-in-time equipment and other items for supporting clients. The service is that much faster for it and the staff doesn't need permission to get their work done. The system isn't without its flaws, but $100 here or there is well worth the price of a satisfied employee and client.??

I was fortunate to know that a life changing event was 9 months away on a horizon and to setup the people, processes, and policies for success. So many others don't know that around the corner is a life altering medical diagnosis or challenge. The 40-week deadline was a long runway for us to setup what we have here at Systems Support.?

To summarize for setting up your employees for delegation success: document the how-to; put in the 15 minute time slots to train; have the team meet on a regular (daily, every other day, etc.) basis to share knowledge and build comradery; give employees the power to recognize each other in a way that matters, and give them the bandwidth to make their own decisions.??

Will MacFee is the CEO of Systems Support in Marshfield, MA and a proud new parent.