The Busy Leader's Handbook

29The Case for Structure:

Why Companies Should Hardwire Processes, Practices, and Other Foundational Building Blocks

Over the years I’ve seen too many leaders spend too much time working in their business rather than on their business. This is a serious problem. The real job of a leader is to work on the business—to define strategy, drive growth, and get the company to the next level. You need to spend your valuable time setting goals, tracking progress, making big-picture decisions, and building relationships. You don’t need to be tied up in trenches working on day-to-day operations. These jobs need to be delegated to others.

When a leader gets stuck in the habit of working in the business they quickly create a situation where everything is dependent on them. This limits a company’s growth. No single person, however driven or talented, can do everything! The solution is to put processes, procedures, and systems in place that give others a blueprint to follow. It’s best to shore up these “building blocks” early on in your company’s trajectory. However, no matter how long your company has been in business, it’s not too late to define and shape them—or to revisit the ones you already have in place and make them better.

Standardizing and hardwiring processes and practices lets you create a high-reliability culture. This is something I learned in my healthcare career. High-reliability companies have very little variance, which is critical in life-or-death environments like hospitals. ...