Raising a child is an incomparable physical and mental commitment. From conception to adolescence, parents toil to cultivate the child physically and emotionally. It is exhausting in every possible way, and fraught with all manner of risk and variables that we simply cannot control no matter how we might try, no matter the promises of the experts.
Then gradually something happens. Our conversations with our children become…interesting. They develop their own opinions, begin to ask compelling questions, push back, and test boundaries. They form an identity apart from their parents.
Let me talk about teenage boys here for a minute.
At the stage I’m describing, the adolescent boy starts to think about what it means to be a man and develops a desire to grow into one. He begins to behave like his concept of a man, rehearsing things he has seen or heard about, hopefully also positively imitating his father.
And, as there is a gap between his desire to grow into manhood and his current grasp of it, he remains clumsy. His mouth is far ahead of his brain more often than not. While he shows a brave face, he thirsts from the inside for a deeper level of leadership, optimally from his parents.
At IGW, we think of a growing business like a teenage boy. He looks like a man, talks like a man, walks like a man (smells like a man), and despite all this, he is not quite a man yet. He needs training, growth experiences, stewardship, and direction.
So too do our businesses. Often through sheer force of will, entrepreneurs grow their businesses into the most impressive teenage boys. Muscular, passionate, intense, and boldly idealistic. Beautiful in every way, and also clumsy and a little bit smelly.
Putting on a brave face, but thirsty for deeper levels of leadership.
Simply letting a teenage boy fend for himself in this precarious phase of transition is the brazen abdication of the responsibility you accepted when you brought that child into the world. It’s a moral outrage.
As entrepreneurs, the decision to transform our leadership does not hold that degree of moral weight. Yet the organization demands that we embolden our leadership stance.
Entrepreneurs take risks in exchange for the promise of reward. For some, the reward is financial prosperity. For others, it is time and freedom. For yet others, it is philanthropy, mentorship, and community involvement.
Whatever the rewards, those of us who started our businesses did so because we saw the opportunity to do something great, and to give a gift to our customers and the world.
And, in top capitalist form, we wanted something in return. We wanted the business to grow in revenue, reach, and profitability. Perhaps we did not foresee the organization’s desire to grow from a boy into a man.
As the founder, as the owner, the responsibility falls upon you to take ownership. “But Dan, I’m the owner! There’s nothing to take–it’s mine already.”
Ownership is not only defined by who holds the stock certificates. Ownership means raising your hand to offer solutions to problems, driving execution, giving away credit for success like candy at an Independence Day parade, and being willing to be the neck that gets rung when things go wrong.
It also means sacrifice. Giving up the role you played in the life of the business that got you to this point, and evolving into the new one that gets it through the next clumsy phase.
No more wiping noses.
In Hebrew, there is a saying: “You can’t dance at two weddings.” When your business begins to demand a higher level of leadership from you, and is ready to push through from adolescence to adulthood, you cannot keep a tight grip on your old approach and expect the business to evolve independently.
One of my core beliefs is that entrepreneurs should do whatever they want to do. While it is true that scale in leadership comes from empowering great people to work IN the business so you can work ON the business, if you own a manufacturing company and you absolutely love working on the line, let nobody stop you from working on the line.
But know that ownership is packaged with far more than freedom. It also comes with the demand the business makes of you to lead.
As a parent, there is no greater pleasure than seeing your children shed a skin and emerge greater. In order to do that, to avoid infantilizing them, we must be greater. We must deepen our relationship with them and level up our leadership.
For our children, this is a moral imperative. For our businesses, it is not a moral issue, but it is the greatest opportunity of our working lives.
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