A few days ago, I received a call from two people I have mentored for several years.

During our conversation, they said something that immediately caught my attention.

“We should have done what you told us to do a few years ago.”

I paused.

“What did I tell you to do?”

“You told us to hire a manager.”

I remembered the conversation.

Years earlier, their healthcare business was growing, and I had encouraged them to bring in someone who could manage the day-to-day operations.

They decided against it.

Their reasoning made sense at the time.

A good manager was expensive.

Why add another salary when the two owners could manage the business themselves?

Besides, nobody knew their company better than they did.

Nobody cared about it more than they did.

So they kept going.

And for several years, it worked.

Until it didn’t.

“What happened?” I asked.

They began telling me the story.

A few weeks earlier, the state had received a complaint about their healthcare company, and a surveyor arrived to investigate.

The company relied heavily on per-diem clinicians. When some of the clinicians learned that the state was there and visits needed to be made during the survey, they were uncomfortable participating.

Suddenly, the owners had a problem.

Someone needed to make the visits.

So one of the administrators stepped in.

It sounded reasonable.

After all, they knew the business.

But there was one problem.

It had been a long time since the administrator had routinely performed those clinical visits.

Knowing how to run a healthcare company and being proficient at frontline clinical work are two very different things.

Mistakes were made.

Serious ones.

The surveyor raised significant concerns, and the company’s license was ultimately suspended.

Suddenly, the manager they once thought was expensive looked very inexpensive.

Now there were lawyers.

Consultants.

Additional nurses.

Corrective work.

Lost revenue.

And a period when they couldn’t admit new patients.

As I listened, I thought about something many business owners understand.

If you’ve ever had a baby, think about the first time you left that child with a babysitter.

You probably gave more instructions than necessary.

You checked your phone.

Maybe you called home.

Even when everyone told you the baby would be fine, part of you still wondered:

“Will they take care of my child the way I do?”

Eventually, though, you had to walk out the door.

Business ownership can feel remarkably similar.

You created it.

You sacrificed for it.

You remember when there were no employees, no customers, and perhaps very little money.

You were there when it was just an idea.

So when someone tells you to hand responsibility to another person, something inside you resists.

“They won’t care as much as we do.”

“They won’t do it the way we do it.”

“We can do it ourselves.”

And perhaps you can.

That’s where the danger begins.

I sometimes think about Undercover Boss.

Executives who successfully run large organizations are sent to perform frontline jobs inside their own companies.

Sometimes they struggle.

Not because they’re incompetent.

Because that’s no longer their job.

The employee who performs a task every day may be much better at it than the person managing the organization.

That’s also why I caution managers against constantly jumping in and doing their employees’ work.

Helping your team when necessary is leadership.

Regularly becoming another employee on the schedule is not.

At some point, a leader’s job changes.

You stop being the person who does everything.

You become the person who makes sure everything gets done by the right people.

And that’s when the phone conversation came full circle.

Years earlier, my mentees had looked at the salary of a manager and thought:

“That’s expensive.”

Years later, they discovered the cost of not having one.

There comes a point in almost every growing business when the owners must make a difficult transition:

From doing to leading.

From controlling to trusting.

From being needed everywhere to building people who don’t need you everywhere.

Letting go doesn’t mean you care less about your business.

Sometimes letting go is evidence that you care enough to let it grow beyond you.

My mentees learned that lesson the expensive way.

Their phone call reminded me that perhaps the most expensive employee in a growing company can sometimes be:

the one you decided not to hire.

So I’ll leave you with the same question I’ve been asking myself:

Where have you become the bottleneck in the very thing you’re trying to grow?

Dr. Anthony Ndungu, PhD. MBA, RN
Entrepreneur | Leader | Growth Advocate
CEO, http://www.kansashomehealth.com|www.medicashift.com|www.meadowlarkcarehomes.com
“We make lives better.”