S1E12: Letting Go

Show Notes

Summary

Letting go sounds simple, but it can be one of the hardest parts of growing a company. In this episode of The Intentional Organization Podcast, Sara Hicks and Mathias Meyer explore why delegation depends on a willingness to release control over how work gets done while remaining accountable for why it matters and what success looks like.

Sara shares how she held on to writing and sending every employment offer letter at Reaction Commerce, even after hiring someone to lead people operations. What felt like a personal touch became a hiring bottleneck. Mathias recalls spending a weekend redesigning customer emails, only to realize he had stepped into his designer's work. That conversation helped him decide to stop writing code and focus on leading the company.

They unpack the emotional side of holding on: identity, fear of losing control, unspoken standards, and the belief that doing it yourself is faster. They also discuss “shadow control,” where a leader hands over a task but keeps hovering, rewriting, or making the decisions. The costs extend beyond the leader's exhaustion: teams learn that taking ownership isn't rewarded, and the company becomes dependent on one person's availability.

Sara and Mathias offer a three-step framework: reflect on which decisions truly need your judgment, document the context and standards behind the work, and learn to tolerate a different outcome. Practical exercises include a calendar audit, listing five things you're still holding on to, and asking what would break—or thrive—if you stepped away for 30 days. They close by connecting a leader's own growth to the company's ability to grow, before sharing a few recent concerts, shows, and books.

Keywords

letting go, delegation, leadership, startup founders, scaling, ownership, trust, expectations, standards, bottlenecks, burnout, shadow control, founder identity

Takeaways

• Letting go is a prerequisite to effective delegation. Handing off a task means little if you still control every decision and detail.

• You can release control over how work gets done while remaining accountable for its purpose and the standards it needs to meet.

• Holding on often comes from good intentions, attachment to your identity, or a desire to protect the team. It can still create a bottleneck.

• “It's faster if I do it myself” may be true in the moment, but repeatedly doing the work yourself prevents others from learning and taking ownership.

• Standards don't spread reliably through observation alone. Make your expectations, reasoning, and definition of success explicit.

• Shadow control—hovering, rewriting, or quietly retaining decisions after a handoff—undermines ownership and trust.

• Start with reflection: which decisions truly require your judgment, and where does your calendar show you getting involved unnecessarily?

• Documenting context and expectations is an investment in the team's ability to work independently. Make time for it before the next handoff.

• Different doesn't mean wrong. Allow room for learning and use agreed-upon review cycles to teach rather than take the work back.

• Ask what would break if you were away for 30 days, what might thrive, and what your team could do that you're currently preventing.

• Work you find tedious may be a growth opportunity for someone else. Keeping it all yourself can become a business risk.

• Letting go builds trust and creates room for your team to do more—and potentially better work—than you could do alone.

Resources mentioned

• The Intentional Organization by Sara Hicks and Mathias Meyer — including the chapter “Delegating Effectively” and their discussion of how a leader's personal growth shapes an organization's growth.

• The Reboot Podcast: The Love that Heals — with James Hollis — Mathias recalls a conversation with James Hollis about the limits a leader's own development can place on an organization.

• Matilda Mann — Mathias shares his experience of seeing her perform in Berlin.

• Drops of God and Your Friends & Neighbors — the shows Sara and Mathias have been watching.

• Orbital by Samantha Harvey — Sara's current reading, following astronauts through a single day aboard a space station.

Chapters

00:00 The Challenge of Letting Go

00:26 The Hidden Costs of Holding On

00:48 The Importance of Letting Go

10:48 Personal Stories of Letting Go

20:56 The Costs of Not Letting Go

25:03 Frameworks for Effective Delegation

29:07 Setting Standards and Expectations

35:17 The Importance of Letting Go

40:50 The Ceiling of Leadership

Transcript

Sara (00:00) Hey you all. we're going to be talking about letting go. it sounds really simple, but it might be the hardest and most overlooked skill when it comes to scaling a company. In this episode, Mathias and I are talking about why it's so much harder than it sounds, why it's really the hidden prerequisite to delegation. It's not delegation itself.

I've got a slightly embarrassing story about employment offer letters that I refuse to hand off for way too long. And we'll get into the real cost of holding on. it's burnout, it's bottlenecks, and a team that quietly learns not to step up. I hope you enjoy.

Sara Hicks (00:49) Well, here we are. Here

Mathias Meyer (00:50) Here we are.

Sara Hicks (00:52) today's episode of the pod. We're going to have a little conversation about letting go, which we were just talking about record that letting go is more than a distant cousin to delegation. We think it's actually a sibling to delegating.

Mathias Meyer (01:08) Close, yeah, not a close sibling.

There's only one kind of sibling, but yeah. Just a sibling.

Sara Hicks (01:12) It's just a sibling. Yeah, just a

sibling to delegation. so, I wrote about it as kind of the hidden prerequisite delegation. And it's one that I certainly have struggled with. I'll share personal story from my days as a founder CEO, but as I was doing research. I came across this definition of letting go in the context of

management and leadership. I thought I would start with this definition because I think it works well for founders and executives. So it's a little long though. Okay, letting go is the deliberate choice to release personal control over how work gets done while

Mathias Meyer (01:52) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (01:53) remaining accountable for why it matters and what success looks like.

I really liked that. it's not just transferring ownership, like transferring tasks from yourself to others. you have to accept that the work's gonna be done differently, but you're still accountable. Anyway, I thought that was an interesting, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (02:10) Yeah, it's an excellent, excellent summary.

Sara Hicks (02:14) Okay, so I'm gonna share a little story from my reaction commerce days, the company I founded and CEO.

I have to admit letting go was was hard, especially as we grew and scaled. I have to admit that the one thing I had the most. Difficult time releasing was employment offer letters. It's a weird thing,

Mathias Meyer (02:36) okay. That's a very, very specific, yeah.

Sara Hicks (02:40) For the longest time, probably way too long, I generated an.

sent out every single employment offer letter. And, you know, there's a lot of tools where you could automate this and put in your, employment offer letter and all the information and you plug in the person's name and salary and all the specifics. I did it manually, people. And I wanted it to come from me. I wanted it to be personal. Like this was, you know, in my mind, kind of the start of the,

the relationship, the bringing someone onto the team and part of our culture. And I justified this for so, long.

for a long time, didn't have HR or people ops person. But even after we did hire this great person, I still held onto until finally I was just

I was the complete bottleneck on this. I was dropping the ball. I wasn't getting them out in time when we were going through some rapid hiring. just felt like it was going to take me too long to put in place the template to do it. then like I still

Mathias Meyer (03:40) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (03:40) wanted these are legal documents. Technically,

Mathias Meyer (03:43) Yup.

Sara Hicks (03:43) you know, they are important.

I was a control freak. Let me just say that I just felt like it was just faster because I had a system in place. I could just do And. That's my story. yeah, I think that's kind of the lead into the episode that I really wanted to talk about around letting go is founders who aren't able to let go just have trouble scaling, right?

Mathias Meyer (04:04) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (04:05) You create this unhealthy dependence. It leads to burnout. I up doing offer letters morning, night, in between all the stuff. And as I've been coaching more more founders and more more executives, whether it's something like that or...

the release process or some other thing that folks hold on to, it's hard, especially as companies scale.

Mathias Meyer (04:28) Huh.

Sara Hicks (04:29) You get used to doing this particular role for so long and then the company scales and you haven't figured out how to let that go or that part of your identity. So I guess my question to you, Mathias, Can you share where you struggled maybe to let go or?

It could be in your coaching. You don't have to go back to something you

Mathias Meyer (04:47) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (04:48) struggled to let go. does something come to mind? Do you have a story like my employment offer letters?

Mathias Meyer (04:55) I do, yes. I went to an event last night with CTOs where they talked about that still writing code, that it's important as a CTO. And I don't disagree with that notion. And I'll also get to my story, don't worry.

but, you know, that was a gist to stay up to date, stay current, stay involved, don't stop coding to still get a feel for what technology can do. And at this stage, what AI can do in software engineering. and I, I, in that round, I was like part of a panel and I said, I stopped writing code 12 years ago.

Sara Hicks (05:26) Okay. Okay.

Mathias Meyer (05:32) And it wasn't like a moment of silence or anything, it might not have been an entire shocker, but I probably was, maybe one of a few. Like, can have been a lot. And again, like this is a group of CTOs, so there is something about staying current, though it all comes with all of the strings attached that you said.

Sara Hicks (05:50) .

.

Mathias Meyer (05:52) where you you do something at night or on the weekends. You become a blocker, you suddenly find yourself in the critical path. Anyway, so this point 12 years ago is a that was a very vivid memory I have from a point where I moved for like basically over the course of a weekend, took a quite drastic

step which I've been known to do in my younger years.

Sara Hicks (06:17) .

Mathias Meyer (06:22) of not touching code anymore, basically realizing that it is my time to focus on management, to be a leader whatever that means. I mean, that was then my next step to figure out those roles actually were. I had this moment where I figured out like something needs to change

Sara Hicks (06:23) .

Mathias Meyer (06:41) and the company needs somebody to look after people.

Sara Hicks (06:44) Hmm.

Mathias Meyer (06:45) And the situation was product that we'd built, send out automated emails and a lot of them, like it was like almost our default communication tool with our users and customers. And those emails were due for a design refresh and somebody

had proposed the new design for those emails, drafted those up for us. And,

eventually, I was pretty fed up with nothing happening around those emails. Nobody took that on and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do it even though I mean, it's not pleasant to build emails and make them look good. And I did that over a weekend as one does as a young

Sara Hicks (07:06) you you

Mathias Meyer (07:29) founder.

And I was very happy with the result in the end. I looked great. And then I showed it to the designer on our team with,

Sara Hicks (07:30) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (07:40) you know, my, a giddy level of pride. And was just, you know, as you do like hoping for standing ovations. Let me just put it like that. Standing ovation.

Sara Hicks (07:50) Validation, right? Yes.

Mathias Meyer (07:52) Yeah. I was looking for a validation.

and you know, her response was just, well, kind of wish you would have talked to me, before doing this, because I mean, clearly this was her purview right? this was what we had hired this person for.

Sara Hicks (08:06) She's not, she's not wrong.

Mathias Meyer (08:08) that means she's completely right. I was like, yes, I should have.

I, you know, many things are a progression and management are not necessarily where it's a, you know, defining moment that changes everything. I'm not necessarily a big believer in that, but that was certainly a very specific moment that I can point to where afterwards said, okay, I actually need to be the CEO of this company because that's what it says on my LinkedIn profile and

back then also on Twitter when it was still the good days. And I'd rather start doing, well, something different. And so I think even within maybe a matter of a week, I said, I'm not gonna touch code anymore. is not

Sara Hicks (08:51) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (08:54) a good use of my time. The company is now big enough that it warrants somebody ensuring that.

people are working on the right things, and that they're also doing well, not burning out. And that's what I did. I let go suitcases full of stones, it feels like, at that point. But I also have never looked back. Even when I'm asked today, do you miss coding? Or before we had AI being able to do that for us, when it was still a thing then.

Sara Hicks (09:07) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (09:27) a craft that we enjoy doing. I was like, no, I don't miss it. I get joy from other things.

Sara Hicks (09:33) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (09:34) it was like maybe two years before then, I had written something again on Twitter, it felt

exhausting to me that I was, you know, had to be responsible for other people's happiness. I think that's almost

Sara Hicks (09:47) Hmm.

Mathias Meyer (09:49) verbatim what I wrote back when you, you know, you thought something and you went to Twitter and typed it into the text field and off it

Sara Hicks (09:55) Hehehehehe

Mathias Meyer (09:57) went. I think like

the other piece that fell into place like in this moment when I finally stopped coding was like Well, that is now my responsibility Right and it took me maybe another year or two to fully Well at that point I accepted it and then one or two years like onwards It was

Sara Hicks (10:16) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (10:16) something that I also finally got, you know my own satisfaction and joy and happiness out of so

There was a progression involved. just, maybe this was the triggering point where everything fell over.

Sara Hicks (10:29) Yep. I love that story. I love that we both have two very clear examples and stories like, I remember so clearly just still holding on to those employment offer letters. And you have that moment with your designer of those emails And for a bigger thing, letting go of coding. know, like,

Mathias Meyer (10:46) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (10:47) such a big thing. Yeah.

So talk a little bit about why it's so hard to let go. it's almost like this emotional what is, it's emotional thing, and why we ourselves and then even our coaching struggle so hard with letting go and

know, there's you're attached to this certain identity, like I was this, you know, this person, or I'm a product person through and through, like I had a hard time letting go of the product for so long,

Mathias Meyer (11:11) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (11:12) like, because the product is the company was my thing, like I can't let go, have to,

Mathias Meyer (11:15) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (11:16) look at every single thing well, that didn't scale, right? yeah, why, why do think it's so hard to let go?

Mathias Meyer (11:21) I mean, one is what you said. the other part is

Maybe a deep sense of, everybody should do what I do. You're setting the example, you're setting tone of how work is getting done, and also you wanna set a good example. think what's important here is there usually isn't a bad intention behind not letting go.

It's just a mental barrier almost that you need to step over. And you you can't attach to just wanting to set the example or wanting to live the standards, the culture that you expect from your team. And again, there's nothing particularly bad about it. It does get frustrating when,

you think as the kind of i don't know like VP CTO you think the standards behaviors and all of that are implied because presumably you're doing them right and people should just pick them up by sheer by observation or osmosis just like it's

Sara Hicks (12:20) Right.

Mathias Meyer (12:21) just ideally something like this trickles through a team

And when it doesn't, you're just unhappy because were hoping, expecting that this is how it works, right? That culture is a thing. When you do it, everybody else does it automatically. And I think in the same way, think about standards, like standards, like engineering is a good example here because like there's a lot about standards in there, right? Like an element of scale there is to have a set of

guidelines, standards or key expectations of how everybody works and

Sara Hicks (12:55) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (12:55) what criteria say a piece of code needs to meet at minimum to be considered ready for production. I don't know, think CTOs I've worked with have a sense of what that quality is or what it should be, but there's also a struggle there.

of actually putting it into words, right? It's just like, it's on the surface, all of these things seem like an I know it when I see it kind of situation, but that work for a Supreme Court judge, but it's not working for an organization that is looking to go from 10 to 100.

Sara Hicks (13:31) Right.

Mathias Meyer (13:31) As you said, like you can't look at every pixel, just like you can look at every line of code as much as you want to.

Sara Hicks (13:38) Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (13:38) Yeah,

and it does feel like, you're losing something, right? In this, like,

Sara Hicks (13:42) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (13:43) I mean, there's this frustration that nobody does what you want them to do, but at this, exactly, nobody cares.

Sara Hicks (13:49) Nobody cares the way I care about this. No, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (13:55) But then also because nobody cares, quote unquote,

and you are so involved in every single pixel, you don't have the time to do the work to teach them like how, like what they should care about.

Sara Hicks (14:10) Yeah, yeah, that illusion of speed like said this like it's just faster. I'll do it myself, you know.

Mathias Meyer (14:15) Yes.

Sara Hicks (14:15) Which is, true maybe in the in the short term, but longer term Again, it you become the bottleneck, so it's so destructive for the team and for the company and for yourself. yeah, there's

Mathias Meyer (14:25) Yeah

Sara Hicks (14:25) so much there's so much psychological aspect to. Having a.

difficult time letting go and why it's so hard, right?

Mathias Meyer (14:32) Yeah, you know, the reasons why this happened are also like, it's what you say, it's a psychological thing. I mentioned this before, like there's always a sense of loss, right? And a sense of this barrier you need to cross of giving something up. Also losing control, like in your story,

not being attached to what the result looks like. And this is the same

Sara Hicks (14:52) Right. Right.

Mathias Meyer (14:54) for me in my email story. Emails are emails. Ideally they look nice, but I don't have to care about where a specific thing goes in those emails. It's just,

Sara Hicks (15:03) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (15:03) A set of of design standards, but I can also expect my experienced designer to work on those. And maybe I give some feedback on those.

but that's where we then get to an element of scale, right? Documenting those standards. then again,

Sara Hicks (15:16) Right. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (15:18) that's work. That's work you need to do. That's time you need to set aside for. And as you said, it's just sometimes it is easier to just to do the work yourself. And

Sara Hicks (15:27) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (15:29) then it is also can also be just easier to, it may be, again, like it's an illusion. Like you take somebody aside and explain it to them.

then you explain it to the next person or you know that the person you just explained it to starts explaining it to somebody and this is how like the Like stuff trickles throughout the team like the osmosis effect, but then you never actually know Do they all have the same understanding? And so

Sara Hicks (15:52) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (15:55) to be fair like also like once you've taken that step across that barrier

There's the part where you need to let go of things, but then there's also the part of not knowing, well, what do I do on the other side? How do I document standards?

Sara Hicks (16:07) Right, right. What am I supposed to do now that I'm not,

Mathias Meyer (16:13) Or how do I actually put into words what I believe to be true and what I want the team to do and what behaviors I want the team to espouse and show?

Sara Hicks (16:24) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (16:25) mean, again, it's easier to just build it yourself.

Sara Hicks (16:28) I think that's key here and we'll definitely to that. That is part of letting go. The most common thing, and I've done this, you let go of the task. The task is like employment offer letters. not so much the task, it's I want to hand over the ownership

of this and here's the standards and here's the what and also letting go of that your way of doing it was the right way. Like you have to kind of maybe be surprised that they might come up with a better way to do it.

Mathias Meyer (16:58) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (16:58) It'll just be different because it won't be your way and you have to, that's like an emotional thing you kind of have to wrap your head around, but.

Mathias Meyer (17:05) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (17:05) Yeah,

can, I mean delegation, again, it often fails when letting go hasn't happened. know, it's hard to delegate when you haven't done this kind of emotional release, when you're still trying to control the outcome, you know, like,

Mathias Meyer (17:18) And usually you will

be not satisfied with the outcome, right? There will be a group of people who quote unquote gets it. And there's, you know, everybody else where they're not, they're not getting it. Like that's, those are, that's

Sara Hicks (17:31) Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (17:32) how I've heard it phrased to me as well.

Sara Hicks (17:34) Yeah, it's a great thing. As I was reading about it and kind of thinking about this podcast, I came across the phrase shadow control, which is like you've

Mathias Meyer (17:42) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (17:42) assigned. You've actually done some delegation. You've done some letting go. You've assigned the task, you haven't really surrendered the ownership like you're still you're still kind of lurking in the shadows controlling you.

Mathias Meyer (17:54) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (17:56) Maybe you still are keeping final decision control.

you're still rewriting, it doesn't mean you can't obviously like have review cycles, but like if you're still doing major critiques and rescuing, you're not really focusing on the standards or, you know, the ownership, you probably haven't let go, so.

Mathias Meyer (18:13) Yeah.

Can I ask you something about your story from the beginning?

Sara Hicks (18:17) Please, please.

Mathias Meyer (18:20) Once you made it across, once you made it the jump and had this emotional detachment and the sense of letting go. What was that like?

Sara Hicks (18:31) couple different feelings. One was like, why did it take me so long? A little bit of shame on myself,

Mathias Meyer (18:35) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (18:36) like, Sara you know, because I knew, I knew that I had held on for too long. So I did feel a little bit of like embarrassment, shame, and the other, I did feel relief. was just like, okay. I do have to admit that there was a period of time where I hovered. I hovered greatly.

Mathias Meyer (18:51) Yeah?

Sara Hicks (18:51) We kept all of our offer letters in a shared folder and I would hover over them.

yeah, I just felt a few different things. A little bit of embarrassment and then the opposite side was relief like, Because then

Mathias Meyer (19:05) Hmm

Sara Hicks (19:06) I just saw that it was working, you know, like nothing happened in fact it freed up the whole onboarding process, the team, they actually improved from.

offer letter going out to all the things that then have to happen. They improve that whole workflow. was just like,

Mathias Meyer (19:23) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (19:23) right. And within, I literally think it was when the days, certainly weeks where it felt like it just unlocked a bunch of things that I hadn't even realized were locked. So I just felt. It felt like a relief overall. With

Mathias Meyer (19:37) Hmm... Yeah.

Sara Hicks (19:38) with tinges of like, why did I wait so long?

Mathias Meyer (19:42) Yeah, that's fair. is still there this transition where you are moving towards something, but you're also leaving something behind, right? And sometimes it is a process to detach from something, especially when you've done it for years. And that's okay. Like nothing happens

Sara Hicks (19:57) Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (20:00) overnight, even though my transition seemingly happened overnight, it was still a process.

Sara Hicks (20:05) Still a process, yeah.

Yeah, now, you know, on the other side of it by a long ways, I think of, how I could have maybe set the standards differently or kind of set that differently. And that's the important part is like, yes, I wanted to not do the task of those letters anymore, but I really more wanted to instill the standards that I really cared about around the

employee experience, someone going from getting an offer letter to joining the team and those first few touches with us and touch points all of that.

Mathias Meyer (20:38) Hmm

Sara Hicks (20:39) Setting those standards and then letting the team kind of make them their own.

Mathias Meyer (20:44) Yeah.

Yeah, that's nice. Yeah.

Sara Hicks (20:48) some of these, but what are some of the other costs? Before we kind of shift into maybe how to help folks let go.

Mathias Meyer (20:56) I

think I'm 48 at the time of this recording and you know, just both of us have been through a few iterations of building companies or be like taking an executive role. I think the thing I can tell folks now with my clients usually being younger than I am and at an earlier stage in their career.

you're gonna burn out like this is not sustainable

Sara Hicks (21:19) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (21:20) like it's like can you you can do the math? You're gonna look at your calendar. You can look at how much you work every week can be from 9 to 10 in the evening. That's that's 13 hours. Holy crap I

Sara Hicks (21:32) Haha!

Mathias Meyer (21:32) mean I used to do that like it's just I did that maybe for a year and then it just it just

was too much and I'm not even trying to sell that. I'm not even saying you should do it for a year. Although on the other side, like there is a time when, especially as a founder, you just, you do put in more work, right? Like it's especially in the early stages, maybe that's a part of it, but that's maybe an entirely different thing. But yeah, it's, you can do the math and like if you don't have any time for recovery, your body is just there, it's not going to enjoy that in the long term.

And you

Sara Hicks (22:08) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (22:09) will regret it. I can say that with high levels of confidence. many founders go through a burnout phase. Many executives go through a burnout phase. and you will not look back at the time

with an appreciation of the decisions you made, but rather, you know,

Sara Hicks (22:25) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (22:25) might actually be regret.

Sara Hicks (22:27) Yeah, I just was thinking that maybe this is another episode, there's a pendulum that always happens around some of these topics.

Mathias Meyer (22:34) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (22:36) There's now this push, and I've seen even job postings that are like, 996, is 996, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. if you're not up for that, don't even consider applying. And a few years back,

It was the four day work week and. And. At they're yeah,

Mathias Meyer (22:55) At least they're being honest.

Sara Hicks (22:58) at least they're putting it right there right out there. And yet there's so much research and data that says, you know, we're more actually more productive, more efficient, more you know when we do have the time

Mathias Meyer (23:08) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (23:08) away. Some of my best thinking is when I'm not sitting at my desk or sitting, you know at at work technically.

Mathias Meyer (23:15) Hmm

Sara Hicks (23:16) Yeah, I mean, I burnout, I definitely felt it. I suffered, you know, my health, I gained a bunch of weight, you know, just exhaustion, decision fatigue, burnout. And I think the team also just learns, right? Like the team learns, well, you know, kind of this helplessness,

Mathias Meyer (23:34) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (23:35) you're not letting go. They have lower initiative.

all these bottlenecks.

Mathias Meyer (23:40) You know

what mean? They have no incentive to, to assume more responsibilities, right? Like, even though that's actually what we, you know, what we were hoping for when we hired them. And then, like, instead of looking at, you know, because that's the harder thing, looking at yourself and looking at everything you contribute to the situation, you know, it's easier to blame them for not,

stepping up and taking more responsibility when they see that's not really rewarded. Maybe it's even punished because I don't know what standards I have to live up to when I do this. So I'm just gonna keep listening to you and I will just keep doing what I do.

And even in recent years, I mean, we've had this been a name for this kind of mode. we somehow, for some reason, it's been called founder mode, where in some way it embodies the not wanting to let go because

Sara Hicks (24:34) it.

Mathias Meyer (24:35) you fear or have experienced again, quote unquote, like bad consequences of letting go.

Sara Hicks (24:41) Yeah.

Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (24:42) Just

how it feels like it is in summary for me, what founder mode is considered to be. And somehow it's glorified, like...

Sara Hicks (24:51) Okay, we could definitely have a whole conversation on founder mode. I'm not gonna go there. If you're listening to this podcast and you've listened to some of our episodes or if you've read our book, know that Mathias and I love a good framework.

And

Mathias Meyer (25:03) huh.

Sara Hicks (25:03) so in our chapter, Delegating Effectively, we have frameworks for helping you to effectively delegate.

I came up with some stages of letting go and I thought maybe Mathias we could kind of talk through like, and we've talked already some of them, these standards,

Mathias Meyer (25:20) Hmm

Sara Hicks (25:21) what are some of the steps we can help our listeners with to let go effectively.

Mathias Meyer (25:28) Hmm.

like that you poured this into a three-step framework. Is it three steps? Yes, it is three steps. Nice.

Sara Hicks (25:34) It's three,

Mathias Meyer (25:35) mean, the first step is always maybe that step zero even, just to acknowledge that you are part of the problem. Or maybe

Sara Hicks (25:45) I'm ready.

Mathias Meyer (25:45) framing it slightly less German.

to let go of things, or you're holding back your team, or you've become a bottleneck.

Sara Hicks (25:54) Yeah, that is step zero

is like I have a problem admitting you have a problem, right?

Mathias Meyer (25:58) Yeah, I

have a problem and sometimes, you know, a useful thing is and then also to ask somebody for help, right? It can be somebody on your team, but also maybe it's somebody on the outside who can then figure it out, help you figure and help you going through this process. But, you know, on lieu of that, we will, we will be that help for the time being. I think step one.

Like, step one could just be thinking about what decisions truly require my judgment as the person holding back. Meaning, what are they really the key questions that I need to be involved in?

I

Sara Hicks (26:35) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (26:35) can't hand those off or I can't handle

Sara Hicks (26:38) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (26:39) part of that part of you know how you got to like the path to getting to that decision but the decision needs to be made by me.

Sara Hicks (26:49) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (26:50) Building a strategy could be one example where you can use input from the team but ultimately

making the decision This is our strategy that usually is something that goes to

Sara Hicks (27:00) Thank you.

Mathias Meyer (27:01) well Whoever the highest paid person in this organization

Sara Hicks (27:03) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (27:04) where the part of the organization is?

Sara Hicks (27:06) Yeah, I love that.

I think that like step one really is about reflection, right? Like as you said, what decisions

Mathias Meyer (27:11) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (27:12) truly require me, my judgment, my decision? I love the question of like, ask yourself what would break if you stepped away completely? Like you were not reachable, you're not online,

Mathias Meyer (27:25) Mm-mm.

Sara Hicks (27:25) you can't respond. If you stepped away for a week or 30 days,

what breaks? Like I would have known that employment offer letters broke and I could have been like, okay, well, I should delegate that or is it truly something that you need to own that it should break? it's just a good

Mathias Meyer (27:43) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (27:43) reference point. Like do some journaling, like sit down and write like what decisions truly, truly you you have to own, you have to be part of.

what breaks

Mathias Meyer (27:52) Yeah

Sara Hicks (27:53) if you step away for 30 days and then look at that list and be like, okay, well, probably some of it doesn't even need to be on it.

Mathias Meyer (28:00) Yeah, think the calendar can also be a good guide for this, right? Where

Sara Hicks (28:04) Great point.

Mathias Meyer (28:05) looking at the calendar and seeing like, where is my time actually going? You could, you know, color code meetings or slots that are booked in there based on, levels potential breakage, right? Or levels of where am I actually needed? And then use that as a starting point.

I mean, it always sounds easier to say it, just like, just get rid of all of the other meetings. But, you know, it can be part of the reflection and also just having the meetings that you are part of in front of you also gives you a clue to think about like, what are the decisions being made at those meetings?

Sara Hicks (28:40) Right.

Mathias Meyer (28:40) And it also opens up a space of not just removing yourself from them, but also maybe looking at the meetings and do we actually, this is actually still useful.

Is it useful that the entire leadership team is in the weekly product meeting at this stage? Or is this actually not a good use of our time? you

Sara Hicks (28:59) Right.

Mathias Meyer (29:00) know, because it's not always easy to think about all the decisions you make during a week. Calendar can

be a good tool to visualize it.

Sara Hicks (29:07) yep, that's a great point. Do that calendar audit. So step one is reflection. Step two is those standards, right? Like around setting the context, not just the actual outcome. we've talked about this, like most handoffs and letting go kind of fails because we hand off the outcome, the task.

Mathias Meyer (29:29) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (29:29) rather than the standards or the thinking or the context. yeah, it's hard, because this is the work. And sometimes you're like, I don't have time to do this

Mathias Meyer (29:38) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (29:39) Instead of saying, hey, will you write this monthly update or will you write this weekly report? That's the task. Instead, you got to step back and say like,

hey, here's why this is important, here's how I think about it, here's I want to see. It's more around the why rather than the what, and that requires some reflection and setting

Mathias Meyer (30:00) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (30:01) those, documenting thinking behind the task, not just the task.

Mathias Meyer (30:06) Yeah, don't know, like expectations is what it kind of comes down to as well, right? Just setting those with

Sara Hicks (30:10) for sure. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (30:12) whoever you're, you know, letting the work go to. Setting clear expectations with them, which is again, it's as is true for all of this, that's work you actually need to do. Right? And it's, there's a hen/egg problem in all of this where when your calendar is full and you're involved everywhere.

It's really hard to find the time to do this kind of work. then, you know, sometimes clients ask me, how can I get rid of it? But I can't, I don't have time. It's like, well,

Sara Hicks (30:42) Right.

Mathias Meyer (30:44) if you want to get rid of it, you have to make the time. Like, it's just, there's no other way. So

Sara Hicks (30:46) Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (30:49) make the time. That's all I can tell There's no shortcut here. It will only lead to frustration for everybody involved.

Sara Hicks (30:57) Yeah, that's the key. have almost press pause and just say, instead of actually jumping in like I always do in kind of hero mode to do this update or to get this offer letter out, I'm gonna actually write down expectations.

Mathias Meyer (31:10) Yeah, I

encourage my clients to think of this as an investment, right? Not as work, like just you're writing something down with

Sara Hicks (31:19) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (31:20) ultimately the goal of scaling, right? Scaling yourself, scaling your team, scaling your organization, scaling whatever value it contributes to the business. So you go slow only temporarily. It's like, it's

Sara Hicks (31:34) Yep. Right.

Mathias Meyer (31:35) a momentary, it's a moment in time.

where you hit the pause button and you

Sara Hicks (31:39) Slow down to go faster. Great.

Mathias Meyer (31:41) slow down to go faster. Exactly. That's the ultimate goal. And that is, it's not always easy to see. Cause again, like it just seems so much easier to do the work yourself.

Sara Hicks (31:51) Okay, so step one was reflection. Step two outlining kind of the expectations and the context, the standards. like that word investment. It's an investment. then so step three is I wrote, you have to learn to tolerate, the outcome.

and that's.

Mathias Meyer (32:07) Uh-huh. Well, you also wrote here

70 to 80 percent. That's a very specific range.

Sara Hicks (32:13) I did. I was like 70 to 80 percent

like the work will be different, right? The work

Mathias Meyer (32:19) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (32:19) that gets done not by you will be different just because it's other people. It could

Mathias Meyer (32:26) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (32:27) be even like 70 percent as good at first or 80 percent.

Mathias Meyer (32:31) Yeah?

Sara Hicks (32:31) And sometimes it actually will be better than what you expect.

Mathias Meyer (32:34) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (32:35) It'll be way beyond that.

But it does require some acceptance. It requires some tolerance. requires that different isn't wrong. this for me and for a lot of my clients is the hardest part. And you can, as part of expectations, set up some agreed upon review cycles. It's not to swoop in. It's not to swoop in,

Mathias Meyer (32:55) Hmm

Sara Hicks (32:56) but it's to teach.

rewriting and hovering like I was for a long time. You haven't let go. But yeah,

Mathias Meyer (33:06) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (33:06) think stage three is that your own work of tolerating that 70 to 80 % rule.

Mathias Meyer (33:12) Yeah, think that you had something here at a different point in our notes, which which I liked, which is maybe a nice way to wrap this part up. I said every time you hold on to something and keep doing the work yourself. You're silently telling your team that you don't trust them. I just I do like that sentence very much because I mean, that's always the thing that

you know, is hard to see and also acknowledge that the,

Sara Hicks (33:34) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (33:35) you don't trust them, you're doing the work yourself thus you are reinforcing the belief that also builds up on their side that you don't trust them. So it's

Sara Hicks (33:42) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (33:43) a nice feedback loop where everybody feeds into it. and you just keep

Sara Hicks (33:48) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (33:48) it reinforcing the lack of trust.

Sara Hicks (33:51) Right.

Mathias Meyer (33:52) and

I think the other part of us like when you know when as a leader you're frustrated with the people around you or you don't delegate anything to them you keep doing the work yourself. what I also like to ask them is why did you hire these people? Like why

Sara Hicks (34:06) Great.

Mathias Meyer (34:07) are they here? Are they just here because you know maybe

somebody thought the company needs to grow and you need to hire more people or are they here because ideally as a group and over time they can actually not just do the 70 to 80 percent but jointly they can probably do a lot better than you do and as we

Sara Hicks (34:28) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (34:29) already established that can be a difficult realization to overcome

Sara Hicks (34:33) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (34:33) but maybe also maybe to offer you know also maybe an element of peace like it can also be incredibly freeing

once you can just acknowledge that to yourself. It's like I've hired these people to do work that is ideally better than what I can do and also more, right? I mean, that's whole point. Like we hire people to do more than we could possibly do because there's only a finite amount of hours every week as much

Sara Hicks (34:58) Right.

Mathias Meyer (34:59) as we would like it differently. yeah, something valuable to think about. And ideally, you you come through...

You get joy out of the fact that your team can actually do more than you, and ideally they can do it better.

Sara Hicks (35:12) Yeah. I just love the framing of letting go is building trust, right?

that it really is, it's a trust building act more than anything your team. that's powerful. anything else? mean, I know I had some other, suggestions in here. It feels like we've covered a lot of ground. always love some frameworks and practical reflections, you know, just to give folks.

a little bit of homework maybe. One of the things that we talked about is like that reflections write down. What are five things you're still holding on to? Maybe why are you holding on to them?

remembered this story and I think it's in our book where, you know, we had someone on the team who was holding on to the release process,

our code release,

Mathias Meyer (35:51) Hmm

Sara Hicks (35:52) the product development workflow and things going to production and that release process was being held pretty tightly. I think when you joined Mathias, you were like, wow, why is this person doing all the releases? Because clearly

Mathias Meyer (36:08) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (36:08) you saw a bottleneck right away. This just doesn't,

Mathias Meyer (36:11) Yeah,

Sara Hicks (36:12) yeah.

Mathias Meyer (36:12) but I think also like this person didn't hold on to this like out of, you know, malicious intent or anything. It was also not, you know, not trusting their team with this, with this process. was more that person actually wanted to protect the team, right? This seemed like tedious work. They didn't want to hand off to the team, right? But let's, you know, even one part we haven't really talked about so far. It's like some work.

You're not letting go off because you find, you know, you're fearing it might be too boring for your team. Right? You might, it might be too tedious,

Sara Hicks (36:45) Might be too tedious. Yeah, might be too, yeah.

Mathias Meyer (36:48) but then again, like it's, there are two parts of this. Like one is what is tedious to one person might be a growth opportunity for somebody else. and then the other is just like, you're still, you're still an incredible bottleneck, right? So it's actually you holding onto this process.

is a business risk.

Sara Hicks (37:06) yeah. a great one. Yeah. And I think the other exercise that I would suggest is that 30 day absence and also the calendar audit that you mentioned, Mathias. like if you did disappear for a month off the grid, you know, what would break? What might

Mathias Meyer (37:20) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (37:21) what might thrive? what are you unintentionally preventing? And just try to like list out

what would break if you disappeared for a month it's a good exercise.

Mathias Meyer (37:29) Yeah, sometimes a useful thing could

also just be to disappear for a month and see what actually breaks. I mean, I'm a big fan and we're talking about this in our book that vacations or time away in general is a great way. It's a painful way, but it is a way where you're clearly going to see is still clearly in

Sara Hicks (37:49) It's true.

Mathias Meyer (37:51) your reign when you're not there to do the work.

Sara Hicks (37:54) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (37:55) Like, it's just,

Sara Hicks (37:55) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (37:56) it's a nice way of identifying boss factors. Which is a very violent metaphor. or bottlenecks.

Sara Hicks (37:59) Right. yeah.

Mathias Meyer (38:02) bottlenecks. Let's stick to bottlenecks. and

where you hold on to

stuff. you know, there's also an easier way to approach this where you also, maybe it's just a day, right? Where you're not there, you're disconnected, and you see what comes up. Or maybe you also give your team permission when I'm gone, and there's a problem, I want you to figure it out, right? Like, you can

Sara Hicks (38:23) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (38:24) call me in an absolute emergency, but if it isn't, I trust you can figure it out.

And I will also say, I've had the experience that people can't. Like time away is the ultimate way of finding out what is actually breaking. Because even just your own biases or maybe some rose colored glasses might still keep you from looking at the things that actually break. Like say for example, you are still the keeper.

of that one single account access, administrative access

Sara Hicks (38:54) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (38:55) that is required to onboarding new employees. That's a very common thing actually.

Sara Hicks (39:02) I held on to that particular thing in our.

Mathias Meyer (39:04) Yeah, it's okay. We

all did. We all did.

Sara Hicks (39:10) And all the bank approvals, like the financial stuff, like I held onto

for so, long. yeah. Which it gets to the last part. Maybe the exercise is also just it's part of that delegation audit. For each of your direct reports or each folks on your leadership team or just key managers, leaders, really ask yourself, where are you the bottleneck? What are they capable of that you're not allowing, even if you think it's tedious or, you know.

what decisions aren't clear and who owns those decisions. Anyway, I think we've covered some good ground.

Mathias Meyer (39:43) Yeah, yeah, and I mean just to

just also to add to that sometimes the answer can also be I need to hire a new person Right to take on to take this on which can also be okay like at least you know at a certain level you have the the power and authority to make that happen and again, like you might you know, there's a good chance you benefit from that person's experience and from Just like with your example and hiring a people person

and just from their experience and their desire to do something different and to do something better.

Sara Hicks (40:17) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (40:17) There's one quote I would just like to just read out and also maybe something for

Sara Hicks (40:21) great.

Mathias Meyer (40:21) our book before we move on, which you guys also like. You have a lot of great quotes in these notes. Just kudos on the research. You wrote here, the founder who cannot let go becomes the ceiling of the company.

And I think in our book we're something that you can tie back to Carl Jung, who was very much into dreams and interpreting those, but also he had this idea of a shadow, which is the

something

like the unconscious and maybe also slightly destructive selves that everybody and like every single human carries in some way. And there's a podcast episode from the Reboot Podcast that we also refer to in the book where James Hollis, a follower or a teacher at this point of Jungian psychiatry psychology.

Sara Hicks (41:05) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (41:11) He you can't take an organization further than you have taken yourself. And so implying that what you wrote here becomes the ceiling of the company, there

Sara Hicks (41:24) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (41:25) is a point where if you don't let go, that also means the entire company is stuck.

Sara Hicks (41:30) Yep, yep, yes.

Mathias Meyer (41:33) I also like that

because as a maybe meta reason for letting go. It is also that like if you're not letting

Sara Hicks (41:39) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (41:40) go of things, you can't expect the rest of the company to let go of things and you can't expect to go from say 50 to 200 people and that just to go swimmingly. Because there's

Sara Hicks (41:50) Right. Right.

Mathias Meyer (41:51) a lot of letting go that needs to happen if you go if you do that stretch.

Sara Hicks (41:55) Yep. I'm really glad you brought in. I hadn't thought about that quote, the Jung and James Hollis quote from our book in a while. But yeah, it's so connected. You can only take the organization as far as you've taken yourself or you become the ceiling. And that's the work. And

I think that's a great place to wrap up. I mentioned this already and you mentioned it, but we do have a whole chapter on delegation in our book.

and I'm sure we will have a future podcast episode on delegation. But

Mathias Meyer (42:23) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (42:23) we felt like this was the prerequisite

doing that episode. And like we always do, we'll end on something fun. fun you got, Mathias? Any concerts, books, anything you've cooked lately I need to know about?

Mathias Meyer (42:36) Well,

I did go to Matilda Mann on Monday. She played in Berlin. This is where Rick... I'm

Sara Hicks (42:41) You're representing the merch.

Mathias Meyer (42:44) repping the merch. This was a lovely small show and I went by myself, which was a thing I hadn't done in a year. I think the last time I did that was Gracie Abrams, pretty much exactly a year ago. I mean, we have like lots of concerts actually coming up.

It's gonna be fun.

Sara Hicks (43:03) Nice, nice, is

Let's see, fun for me. I mentioned before we got on the pod that I'm watching Drops of God, season two on,

Mathias Meyer (43:11) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (43:12) I think it's Apple TV. I loved season one. I am enjoying season two, although my expectations were very high. I love The Premise. It's a great show, I recommend it. I am enjoying season two.

I think we're only four or five episodes in, so we're...

Mathias Meyer (43:33) It's getting there, yeah. We've been watching

Sara Hicks (43:35) It's getting there.

Mathias Meyer (43:36) Your Friends and Neighbours also on Apple TV, which is also pretty great. With Jon

Sara Hicks (43:40) yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (43:41) Hamm, I mean, he's aged well, if I may say that, just, you know, man to man. But it's also just a good show. Lots

Sara Hicks (43:47) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (43:49) of good stuff happening on Apple TV, and this is not advertising.

Sara Hicks (43:55) Let's see, I started reading Orbital. It's

Mathias Meyer (43:58) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (43:58) by I want to say Samantha Harvey. It won the Booker Prize last year or the year before. It's about.

some astronauts a day, well one day, a single day aboard the space station as

Mathias Meyer (44:15) Okay.

Sara Hicks (44:15) they observe life and earth and they reflect on who they are and their identity and their lives. I'll probably finish that pretty quickly and I've been on a kick with novels it seems but I

Mathias Meyer (44:29) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (44:30) I recommend it. very thought-provoking.

Mathias Meyer (44:32) It is nice. I've been reading, just maybe in preparation for my upcoming studies, book on, a German book actually for a change, on the psychology of power. It's been quite fascinating to read.

Sara Hicks (44:45) excellent. All right, well, with that, will let go. Ha, see what I did? We will let go.

Mathias Meyer (44:50) We will let go of this podcast episode. Nicely

done.

• #Leadership
• #WorkplaceCulture