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11 Mar 10 Become a success by making yourself replaceable
In the corporate world, people usually do all that they can to make themselves indispensable, both for career progression and for job safety. In the best case, people will work hard to stand out as high performers, more often though, people will hoard information, obstruct other people from understanding what they do all the way down to outright backstabbing and bad mouthing of colleagues.
If you’re in business however, being irreplaceable is a downright bad idea. Being irreplaceable means you can’t take a holiday, you can’t go away, you risk wearing yourself out by doing everything and most of all, you severely limit the upside potential of your success.
I’ve been as guilty as anyone in the past of thinking “if you want it done well, you’ve got to do it yourself” - I’ve done all the software development, all the marketing (poorly), business development, finances, little errands etc by myself. Lately however, I’ve started to shift my thinking..
Yes, to be a success in business, I probably need to be able to contribute something valuable myself at the outset. But these days I’m not even interested in a business idea if I can’t think of ways to eventually minimize my own role in the business. If I can’t take a step back and let other people run things, I don’t want to do it (unless you’re talking about insane amounts of money, hey, everyone has a price).
Basically, I want to design myself out of the system/business from day one, have a clear view on how I will exit. I have no interest in working myself into the ground, I don’t want to work in a business, I want to own a business that others can run for me with the occasional watching eye from me.
My business success in 2009 was limited, partially because of the recession, but also in large part because of a lack of time to put some of my best ideas to work.
For this very reason, one of my main themes for 2010 will be automation and to some extent making myself as replaceable as possible. It will probably take some trial and error and sunk cost that I won’t be able to get back before I get it right, but I think it will turn out to be a sound long-term investment.
