Does your business Revolve around you – or Run without you?

Are you spending too much time working in the business instead of on it?

In this episode, John explores why strategy execution is not just about knowing what needs to be done, but creating the space, structure, and leadership rhythm to actually do it. He explains why business owners can get trapped in doing, fixing, and firefighting, and how shifting into clearer thinking, better decisions, and leadership alignment can help the business start running without everything revolving around you.

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00:01:05 — Working On the Business

00:02:30 — The Knowing-Doing Gap

00:04:20 — When the Old Way Stops Working

00:08:15 — Stop Being the Fixer

00:10:15 — Creating Space to Think

00:12:10 — Letting Go of Control

00:14:20 — Choosing What Is Important

00:15:40 — Building Your Leadership Team

00:18:20 — Working on the Bigger Picture

00:21:30 — The Grounded Man Hike 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I heard somebody say once, you either build a business to revolve around you or run without you. And so you've likely chosen the path of it revolving around you, and now you need to transition over to it running without you. In the middle of the mess, this is what it feels like. You not being involved anymore. You not micromanaging. Maybe you micromanage too much. And so you have to let go of that control and trust other people. Welcome to the Grounded Man podcast by Deru. I am your host, John Douglas, and founder of Deru. And this space is for hardworking men building businesses, carrying responsibility, and providing for their families who feel they should be freer. You see, the world has changed, and leading through hard work and long hours now limits a man's influence. The new way is mastering the inner game of leadership so you can carry it well, enjoy what you're building, and still feel free. Deru is leadership for the 21st century. And this week we are talking about strategy execution. What a boring word. But it is necessary in growing a business that we work on the business, that we work on strategy, we work on systems, we work on structures, we work on, you know, developing people, opportunities, partnerships, that we work on the business to actually grow the business. Okay. Because it doesn't grow unless we work on it in certain ways. And if we find ourselves too much stuck in the doing, then we we're just on the front line, we're getting work done. It seems productive, seems busy, but is it actually getting us where we want to? And that's what I really want to talk about this week. Because the problem is that if we spend too much time working in the business, well, then obviously we can't work on the business because we can't multiply our time. So we need to be very clear on where our time goes, what we prioritize, which is essentially what strategy is. Strategy is about prioritization because we realize there's a limited resource, like a limited amount of time, limited amount of people, limited amount of budget, and many other limitations on what we can do. And so we need to look at how do we maximize and create the most value from our resources that we do have so that we can provide the most impact, make the most profitability, provide the best place of work for people, to develop meaningful work for people. And so that's really what strategy is about. And so executing it then really is about actually doing the work. So what is the problem then? The problem is that we're not doing it. There's a great teacher called Bob Proctor who talked a lot about the knowing-doing gap, that we often very much know what we need to do. And this doesn't apply just to business and comply to your health. Like you want to get fit and healthy, you know you need to eat better food, maybe eat a bit less and work out more and move more. It's very simple. We know that, yet we have huge problems with obesity in the country and huge problems on the health. And likewise in business, we know often what the best strategy is. We know the best systems, we know the best structures. We kind of know what we need to do and what we want to do for most of the time. Now, sometimes we don't, and we need to gain that clarity. But once you have that awareness, then you actually need to act on it and take action. And so what can stop you doing that then is your old habits, maybe some fears, things like that. But Bob Proctor called this the knowing doing gap because you know you need to what you need to do, but there's a gap in actually doing it. The problem is with this one, it's it's not just about doing more. If it was just a case of doing more, you would probably find it easier. The problem is with working on the business that most of the working on the business is actually about thinking differently, thinking bigger, thinking more clearly about what you're doing. And so the problem is that when we're used to doing so much and being the one that does the most in the business, that carries the most workload or carries the most weight or most pressure, that that can actually hold us back. And that may have worked very well, it might have been a great strategy up until now, because business has different seasons and your career has different seasons and the workers different seasons, and sometimes you need to grind it out. But it comes to a place where that doesn't work anymore, and it actually goes the opposite way. It starts to put things backwards. And so you might be in you're thinking of your business as you're running at the moment, and maybe you do monthly meetings, management meetings, or weekly management meetings, and do you find yourself going over the same problems, the same topics, the same issues, the same challenges over and over again? And do you find that you have the same conversations and you talk about the same solutions and you talk about taking the same actions, yet month after month, when you come back to these things, it's all the same. It's the same old, same old. It's like the move the needle isn't moving, it's not going anywhere. But you know the team has capability, you know the opportunities are there, but you're not growing. And that's the frustration in it. And that's what I want to help you be free from. Because I don't want you to wake up someday and realize I've had enough. I'm not enjoying this anymore. It's not worth it, it's not worth the effort, it's costing too much. The success is costing too much. I want you to avoid that because there's a huge cost now. When you start wasting resources, wasting energy, wasting opportunities, that builds up over time and there's for it's very frustrating. And so, and it can more importantly, it can start to impact your own self-belief. And you start to doubt yourself, and maybe you start to think, am I really the man to lead this business? Am I really the man to lead the other other people? Am I really the man be who's able to communicate the vision? Am I really the man that's going to be able to do all that? And you need to have strong certainty, unwavering confidence and saying yes to that. And if it's not there, well then that's that needs to be there. You need to get that back. So, how do you actually want things to be? Well, you probably want things to have those monthly meetings, okay? But you probably want to be talking about different challenges every time because that would so that would actually signal growth. Because you're always going to have problems and challenges in business. That's what a business gets paid to do is solve problems. And even understanding that and accepting that as an idea can be a big release. Like most of business is just problem solving. And whether that's inside in your business or outside of your business, you're doing it for other people, that's what you get paid for. But imagine every month you're coming up with new challenges to growth, new bottlenecks that you've never come up against before. So, on one hand, there's obviously a challenge in that, it slows things down, but on the other hand, it shows progress, it signals growth because there's new, new, new bottlenecks coming up. So imagine your team telling you that they've implemented these strategies, that they've developed a new system for this, they've developed a new structure for communication, they have developed a new strategy for sales and showing you how it's working. That's really what we want. We want to see that because how would that feel? You feel excited, you feel energized by that, you get that confidence, you get that your ambition back. Because often when your team maybe try and come up with excuses and there's a bit of uh, you know, denial, lack of accountability, and they're too comfortable, maybe. And so they kind of maybe drag you, want to drag you back down to that, and that lowers your ambition. But when you have a team around you who are united on your vision and you're executing strategy and you're moving the needle and things are growing, you get that ambition back, you know, you get that confidence back. And so that's where I want you to be. Because the cost of this, as I said, is going to be wasting your energy, wasting your headspace, wasting your time. And then you question, is it all worth it? And I don't want you to be there. And plus, your trust will erode within the team as well. And they'll they'll they won't have trust in each other, they won't have good personal relationships with each other, uh, and so that's that just turns into a toxic culture, then as well. So I want to avoid all of that. And so, what's the gap? And the gap is for you first and foremost to see yourself differently. Because if you see yourself as the fixer or the doer, the one that fixes all the problems, the one that does the most, you have you have to change that. You have to change that. Last week I spoke about becoming the visionary, seeing yourself as the visionary leader. So you need to see yourself as the leader, as the creator of things and not the doer of things. Because I broke it up last week into three buckets. You have low impact tasks, mid-impact impact tasks, and high impact tasks. And the low impact tasks are very much on the front line of the business, delivering your service or products. The middle bucket is more about the management of that and supervising it. And then the high impact is you're the one leading it, creating it, developing new opportunities for the future. And so, where does your time go? And most people, a lot of their time goes into the low and the mid-bucket and not so much in the high impact bucket. And I can guarantee you, your team won't outperform you. So if you're not putting time into working on the business, then neither are they, essentially. Unless you have a very big budget and you've hired top people who are, you know, as you said, they're the smartest people in the room. Um, you bring those people around you, but that takes an awful lot of foresight and budget to do that. So you're probably in a position where you're the one that's kind of the smartest person in the room, so to speak, about your business and about this line of work. So you're the one that has to work on the business most and you're going to limit that. Because people don't feel they're going to have the permission to do that unless you're doing it. So you need to see yourself as the creator, as the leader of this, and not the doer anymore. And this is a big one because in doing this, you need to let go of you need to let go of the idea that your value comes from doing. Okay, this is a big one now because you're listening to this, you're probably a hardworking man growing up around family, neighbors, community, a lot of hardworking men in there, okay? Protect, provide all physical, long hours, that kind of work ethic. That's what we've seen, that's what we're conditioned to. And now I'm telling you, you need to let go of that because you need to see your value beyond what you do. And when it comes to leading, the crux of all leadership is being able to think. And so you need space to think for yourself, and then you need to create a space for your team to think. Because if you don't think better, you'll keep thinking that doing more is the answer. And Albert Einstein said that you can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it, and so you need to change your mindset. The only way you change your mindset is change how you think. The only way you think is actually you make space to think. So if you're working like uh even anything over a 40-hour work week to 60 hour plus maybe work week, you need to be able to carve out time to think. And if you if you want to wonder wondering what I'm talking about when I'm saying talking about thinking, go and listen to last week's episode about thinking about the vision, thinking about the strategies, thinking about the different areas that you need to get clarity in the business and having a clear vision to share and communicate with other people. But this is more about okay, how do we actually actually how do we actually do that now? So the first step is uh actually giving yourself space to think. So if you want to execute strategy, you need to actually know what the strategy is, know what the systems are, know what the structures are, and that's only going to happen when you create that space. So seeing yourself, seeing your own value and your own worth beyond just doing work. Now that's hard to let go of because there's a part of you that likes being stuck in the middle of it. It likes the busyness, it likes being involved, it likes being the center of attention, and you have to let go of all that. I heard somebody say once, you either build a business to revolve around you or run without you. And so you've likely chosen the path of it revolving around you, and now you need to transition over to it running without you. In the middle of the mess, this is what it feels like. You not being involved anymore, you not micromanaging. Maybe you micromanage too much, and so you have to let go of that control and trust other people, but you need to get out, get your head out of that day-to-day zone. And I would start by giving myself at least a couple of hours a week just to sit down and think about where it is I'm going, how I'm going to get there, what the roles are, what kind of strategies do I need in place, what kind of systems to start thinking about it. And so you need to start valuing yourself differently because you have to, and to do that, you measure success differently. So, success, when you're moving from the the doer to the leader, success is not about how much did you get done today. How many things was on your to-do list that you checked off. That is not success as a leader. Because when you're working on the high impact work, you're thinking six months down the road. So, really, what you want to start measuring your success on is how many good decisions did I make this week? Because when you start making the decisions, you allow that energy to flow better, not just inside you, like mentally, but actually or emotionally, but actually in the business too. You need to make the decisions on on this system or that structure or this strategy and help other others and mentor them and give them clarity and guidance on where they need to go. So it's all about the decisions you make. What are you nurturing? What are you growing? What are you tending to? And this way you start to value your time from what you're putting into it. Okay, the decisions you've made, how much clarity you've gained. Even today, as I'm recording this podcast, I spend a lot of time thinking about Deru and thinking about a framework to kind of help my clients get even better results, even faster results. And so I looked at the day and said, Oh, it was a slow day today. Wasn't that productive of a day. Yet when I look back, I'll I'll implement that and I'll realize that was the most important work that I could have done this week. And this has happened time and time again, and I'm sure you resonate with this. So it's giving yourself permission to do that. Giving yourself permission to value what's important and not what's urgent. Because the day-to-day stuff will be the busyness, the reactive, the firefighting, the urgency. And human beings, when we're running on survival mode and used to that survival and pressure, urgency feels real. Urgency feels most valuable, urgency feels like life or debt. But in a business context, it's never, it never is. Unless it's literally going to bankrupt you today, it's not life or debt. Okay? So give yourself some space to think. And so you have to ask yourself, why am I not giving myself that space? Maybe I don't believe, maybe I don't know exactly where I'm going. Maybe I don't know exactly how it's going to work. Maybe I'm afraid of getting it wrong. Maybe I'm afraid of failure. Maybe I'm afraid of not being able to lead other people. And so you have to let go of all that. You have to let go of it and give yourself permission to fail. Give yourself permission to get it wrong. Give yourself permission to let other people down. Give yourself that permission to do that. And I also want to share with you, I suppose, uh two practical things as well that you need to think about. One is for to have a business that runs without you, obviously you need somebody else to run the business. And now, if you're the business owner, that's likely not going to be one other person because you, as the business owner, are probably involved in the sales, in the operations, in the finance, in the marketing, in the whatever other departments you have. Okay. But when you're getting your kind of right-hand man or woman or team in place, they're going to have a different skill set, different mindsets, they're going to have different values, different priorities. And so you can't expect one person, obviously, to carry all that. And so it's probably more than likely going to be three people, you know, maybe somebody in sales, somebody in operations, somebody in finance, maybe even a fort, whatever it might be. So you're thinking of how of starting to identify that, let's call them your senior management team, okay, your senior leadership team. Because they're the ones that are going to, when you step back, they're the ones that are going to take ownership and own those different areas of the business. So if you don't have that team in place, if you don't have those people identify, that's that's the first step. You need to do that. Okay. So you need to identify who your team is, okay, the A team, let's call it, and get them in place. And then the next thing you need to do is start having a weekly workshop with them. Now notice I didn't say a weekly meeting, I said a weekly workshop because most meetings have a tendency to run over on time, to run over on their boundaries, run over on their agendas, run over on their focus, run over on decisions, and nothing comes of it. And everyone leaves feeling everyone leaves feeling uh deflated rather than energized after it. Okay. Now not all meetings, but some meetings, okay? A lot of the ones that um that frustrate you at least, they're the type of meetings, they're usually why if it it it uh frustrates you. So I call them workshops, and uh what I'm gonna call these, I mentioned in the last episode as well, is leadership alignment workshops. So leadership alignment workshops. Leadership because you're trying to develop leaders. So you need to see yourself as the leader, but you also need to get a few people around you to see themselves as leaders too. Okay? So we have to shift everyone's identity from doers to leaders. So that's the reason leaders is in the title. Alignment, that's what we want. That's what we're trying to unite on. So we we spoke a lot in the last episode about you know being clear on the vision, uh, being clear on the roles, being clear on the strategy, being clear on the direction, and being able to communicate that. And so you need a tool to be able to communicate it. And so um alignment is what it unites us all, that we're all pulling in the one direction. And so the the workshop then is the tool to do that. Okay, it's the it's the space to think. So this is not um this let's say it's a 60-minute workshop every week where we come in and we talk about working on the business, we talk about bigger picture stuff. Not today's problems, not this week's problems, not firefighting. The number one rule for this is you cannot let it become a firefighting meeting because there's lots of other meetings that go on during the week, lots of other calls and discussions you have that cover that. Most of your time, 95% of the time, our interactions is talking about problems to fix, urgency, all that. This is not for that. This is for long-term thinking, working on the business, and this is not actually working on the business. This is like the catalyst or the cornerstone, uh, the keystone habit. It's what it's the linchpin that underpins working on the business. Because this meeting becomes the space to think about what you're gonna build, where we're gonna go, how we're gonna get there between you and your management team, your leadership team. So this helps them break that old identity of being doers and just workers to being leaders, because you're creating a space to think. And then also when you've made decisions as a team, you make some decisions, maybe everybody takes away one action to take to do over the next week. You hold each other accountable on that. Okay, you hold each other accountable to taking that action. And so now what you've done, we've started out talking in this episode about you know, too much doing more, more, more. Most of the people who are around you will say, I'm too busy, I can't do anymore. And I say to that, absolutely great. I'm I'm delighted you can't do any more. Because now you're left with the only option there is, and that's to think better. And so the leadership alignment workshop is a space for your leadership team to think better. And when they start thinking better, they start to see themselves differently, they start to see their roles differently, they start to see the business differently, they start to see, I suppose, their power to change things and influence things differently, which makes them feel more energized and more empowered to take ownership naturally of the business. Because taking ownership is not about doing more, it's actually about thinking better. And remember, we're trying to grow a forest here, right? Looking at business through the eyes of nature, we're trying to grow a forest here, and we need everyone to tend to it and to be keepers of that forest. And it starts with you and your management team. So there's so there's three things to take away from this episode. Number one is you need to create space in your week for you to think care, just to think, okay. Get a notepad, start doodling, start thinking about where we're going, how we're going to get there, why we're going to get there, all that kind of stuff. Then you need to identify your senior management team, if you haven't done so already. And then you need to set up those leadership alignment workshops, that space to think differently. And what you'll find is uh when you do that, and then you start to hold each other accountable to that, to showing up, to looking long term and to working on the business, even just a couple of hours a week to working on the business, that becomes a catalyst for change. And so strategy execution, which is again prioritization of resources, becomes a natural byproduct to running these meetings, having this communication and working together, being united, pulling in the one direction on this. So, thanks for watching today. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you all next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. The wisdom here doesn't come from me, it actually comes through me, from the men like you that I walk alongside. And if the conversation today landed and you would rather live it rather than just listen to it, I want to invite you to the grounded man hike. It's a day in nature with a small group of founders and leaders, men who carry a lot and want to carry it lighter. And there's no slides, pitch or agenda, just honest conversation and open ground. The link is in the description below. Leave your details and I'll be back to you personally. Thanks for being here, and I'll see you next week.