Well I never claimed to be the brighest of sparks and to be honest some things take a while to sink in. I am reminded of several occasions in my life when my deeply ingrained synaptic pathways prevented me from seeing what was blindingly obvious to others. My initial fears about setting out on my own were quickly replaced by a fear fueled motivation and drive not to mention the pressure of a bunch of new business from pretty much day one. And yes I know all the adages about working smart not hard; about being productive and not just busy and I have rattled them all off to others with great aplomb in my time. But I was ill prepared for the fact that I would actually be the greatest hinderance to this being successful.
It kinda happened in a flash as a friend (also a start up junkie) was describing an issue with one of his early hires. What became apparent early on was that said 'manager' hadn't a clue what the employee did. Well thats not eaxctly right, he knew what she did but he (the manager) could not have done it himself. Instinctively I was about to go off on one of my preachy, sermonising rants about a good manager knowing every aspect of the business when suddenly something deep in the receesses of my tweeny brain flickered just long enough for me to bite my tongue.
I remebered how I always marvelled at his ability to delegate, his ease with managing other people and suddenly I realised that he didnt know how to do any of their jobs. He barely understood the technical nature of what they did and yet he was able to run a successful startup. Anyone who has played that game Jenga will be familiar with the feeling just before the tower of wooden blocks collapses, they seem to teeter in slow motion for an eternity and then cascade all over the table.
My friend looked at me in dismay as yet another edifice of presumptions collapsed in my head. You see, I knew how to do practically every step of every job in my own startup. Having faithfully documented the process of getting and delivering business, I had identified nine steps and I realised that I could do each of these steps. And as I compared our respective approaches to manageing a business I realised how this apparent benefit had in fact turned out to be the greatest curse.
The fact that I can do all nine steps invovled in my business means that I invariably do. Its easier to just do it myself than to build a process and delegate it to others so I end up doing at least six out of the nine jobs. The problem however is that I'm so busy doing the work, that I haven't time to do the business (if that makes sense). I'm not just filling the gaps, I am permanently involved in every step of the process with every customer and rapidly realising that this cannot work if I'm to grow this business. If my customer numbers doubled tomorrow, I'd be in serious trouble.
Subject: Dear Employee
Get out of your own way. Stop being a control freak. As long as you continue to be centre of the company, it will never grow beyond you. Relinquish control and start to delegate to others.
But then I thought, hang on, how many steps am I from the end customer, how far am I from the guy who writes the check. Me to the MD, the MD to his account exec, the account exec to his opposite number in the client company, the client exec to his boss who probably has to clear spend with the client CFO. 
More importantly though was the daily ritual of deciphering Mr Moynihans accent. Imagine a man who pronounced the word 'yellow' as 'yullah' and now have him teach you latin. Oh the joy. Had we been beamed back to Rome and said a word in Moynihans accent, we would no doubt have been the first christians in Roman history, thrown to the lions for maligning the language. But, and theres always a but (title of an upcoming post no doubt), 20 years after forgetting most of my latin allow me to dazzle you with a phrase that beautifully sums up my approach to this blog indeed to any other site blog or book that would pretend to offer you some recepie for entrepeneurial success. Wait for it....