Tom Murphy is one of those guys that not enough people know about it. He ran Capital Cities Communications (which you also likely haven’t heard of) for years back in the 1960’s until it eventually acquired the ABC network in 1985, which was later purchased by Disney in 1986.

His story is fascinating, and a recent episode of the Founders podcast dug deep into it. While there were a lot of great stories in that show, and perhaps more posts to come, this one stood out the most. It’s a story of a bartender that purchased stock in Capital Cities in the 1970’s (which undoubtedly earned a massive return on investment) and why he did it:

He told me a story about a bartender at one of the management retreats who made a handsome return by buying capital city stock in the early 1970s.

When the bartender was later asked why he made the investment, he replied, “I’ve worked a lot of corporate events over the years, but capital cities was the only company where you couldn’t tell who the bosses were.”

The idea of “you couldn’t tell who the bosses were” is an interesting one. On the one hand, as the bartender shares, it can be a great thing. The bosses get along with their team, and everyone pushes forward.

On the other hand, we’ve all seen organizations where the leadership becomes great friends with the team and then is unable to make tough decisions. It’s a fine line, for sure.

Given all that Murphy and Capital Cities accomplished, not to mention the love that Warren Buffett had for Murphy’s style, I tend to think he did things the right way. Not being able to tell who the bosses were can indeed be a very good thing.

Kevin Paul Scott has a fantastic description of the idea of “stewardship” versus that of “ownership”. In his book “Return on Inspiration“, he says:

“Stewards take care of things for other people; owners look out for their own interests. When we look at companies through this lens, we see that some owners act more like stewards because they use their resources for the benefit of their employees and customers. Everything we are and everything we have comes from the hand of God. He has entrusted goods, people, and opportunities to us. When we have that perspective, we treat employees, customers, and vendors with respect.”

Are you taking care of things for other people, or just looking out for your own interests? I’d argue that the best way to look out for your own interests is to take care of things for other people, so it should be an easy decision.

It’s similar to the idea of training people well enough so they can leave. You’re giving up some “ownership” by giving your employees more power, but it’s likely to be of benefit to everyone in the long run.

I’ve found that in most areas of life “ownership” will improve your short-term gains, but “stewardship” will lead to wildly better results down the road.

There’s a maxim I’ve heard a few times over the years that goes something like: “You should invest in your team to make them the best that they can be. This may mean that some leave for better opportunities, but that beats the opposite of just not investing in them at all.“

This came to mind while recently listening to Richard Branson on Adam Grant’s ReThinking podcast where Branson said:

“Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

It’s vitally important to do both.

• If you fail to train people “well enough so they can leave”, you’re stuck with a bunch of employees that aren’t very valuable.
• Of course, if you train them super well but treat them poorly, then you’re going to have never-ending churn.

The challenge is that it takes time, effort and resources for both sides of that. You’ve gotta commit to continue to train and treat them well perpetually, but if you can do it the payoff will be amazing.

When I was reading Josh Kaufman’s “The Personal MBA“, he shared this interesting viewpoint about our calendars from Paul Graham. He said:

Paul Graham, a venture capitalist, programmer, and essayist, calls this batching strategy “Maker’s Schedule/Manager’s Schedule.” If you’re trying to create something, the worst thing you can possibly do is to try to fit creative tasks in between administrative tasks—context switching will kill your productivity. The “Maker’s Schedule” consists of large blocks of uninterrupted time; the “Manager’s Schedule” is broken up into many small chunks for meetings. Both schedules serve different purposes—just don’t try to combine them if your goal is to get useful work done.

My initial reading was that most of us should work to have a “Maker’s Schedule” so we don’t kill our productivity, and perhaps that’s true, but there are big exceptions.

It reminded me of someone I worked with years ago when he was a project manager. He was a great guy and worked hard, but he tried to have a “Maker’s Schedule” and that just didn’t work for his kind of role. If you’re a project manager, you have to live by more of a “Manager’s Schedule”, where context switching IS the role. Ultimately, it led to him moving on to a different company (and a very different role) where a “Maker’s Schedule” was the proper fit for what he did.

This also has me thinking about my schedule and role. My schedule undoubtedly should be a “Maker’s Schedule” at this point, but it’s still a “Manager’s Schedule” for the most part. It’s something I need to work on, and this simple framework is helping me push it forward.

What kind of schedule do you have? Is it the right one for what you do?

I’ve shared a bit about Danny Meyer (founder of Shake Shack, among other restaurants) before, as he has some amazing insights on leadership. In a recent podcast with Adam Grant, he shared a few more gems.

One in particular was a quote about hiring. Danny believes in hiring great people and then allowing them to be great. Specifically, he says:

“If you hire great people, get out of their way and let them succeed. Yes, give them the tools, but don’t do stupid things that make it harder to succeed.”

It’s easier said than done, but it can be fantastic. It’s very similar to the idea of never managing people who don’t need to be managed. If you hire someone amazing, then managing their every move seems like an awful idea. They should follow the core processes and procedures that you’ve set in place, but beyond that they should have the freedom to just get things done.

If you’re hiring someone for minimum wage at your fast food restaurant, then dictating their every move might be a good plan. However, if you’re paying a generous salary to an amazing employee, anything other than letting them be amazing is just going to hold everyone back.

I often see posts on Reddit that follow a similar path:

• An employee works hard at their company.
• They find new ways to do their job more efficiently.
• Management decides to tighten down on exactly how they should do their job.
• Things therefore become less efficient, they lose clients, and the employee quits.

While I certainly appreciate that processes exist for a reason and there are times to square things back up, when people are working hard to get things done it’s often best to stay out of their way. Ideally, employees should be lead, not managed.

In the case of GreenMellen, I don’t feel the need to “manage” anyone there (and if anyone from our team is reading this, I hope you agree and you’ll tell me if you don’t). Really, it comes back to a matter of trust. If I trust the people that work for us, it makes life better all the way around. We set parameters on what work needs to be done, values around how we work, and let the team decide how best to do it and when to work on it.

There’s certainly a need for people to be managed in many circumstances, but don’t try to manage those that don’t need to be managed in the first place.

As GreenMellen has grown over the years, one of the challenges that Ali and I have faced is figuring out what our roles should be at various stages. Early on it was easy; she was the designer and I was the developer. Once those roles were filled by others, where did that leave us?

It’s a question that has no simple answer, and we’ve done different things over the years. In a recent episode of the “Founders” podcast, host David Senra shared this regarding Thomas Edison:

“Really, the way I think about a founder is like you’re developing skills that you can’t hire for. You’re gonna hire for everything else, but you shouldn’t be hireable. And Edison wasn’t.”

More specifically, Edison is quoted as saying:

“I can hire mathematicians, but they can’t hire me.”

Over time, I’ve worked to build skills are more valuable for the company, but also trickier to define. My role now consists of a bit of CFO, some HR, some sales, and various things to keep the company running smoothly. Ali has a very similar (yet very different) list of her own. That list of items changes quite a bit for both of us, as we hire out the hireable skills, and work to develop the more challenging ones.

Becoming someone who “isn’t hireable” is a bit nerve-racking, but is likely the best way to lead a company.