I want an organization of people who can technically manage themselves. Not because I dislike management — because management's real job is passing along information. Context. Standards. The why behind the work. If someone needs me to schedule their judgment, we hired wrong or we starved them of context.
The cultural expectation on our team is simple enough to say and hard enough to live: if you report to me, you manage yourself. My core group is small, very connected, and holding the full picture. They can — and should — get anything done anywhere in the company. There is too much going on here for any other model to survive.
Definition — self-managing is not unmanaged
Self-managing does not mean abandoned. It means ownership with context. You know the scoreboard. You know the customer outcome. You know when to escalate judgment versus when to ship. You do not wait for a standing meeting to invent work or hide behind a title.
That is the same spine as building a company that can run without you and leadership teams that scale — stewards, not heroes; scoreboards, not stories. Hierarchy that exists only to route permission is a tax on speed. Context that travels is an asset.
When I jump in — any level, on purpose
My theory of involvement is the opposite of "stay strategic and never touch the weeds." If there is a decision I want to be involved with, I will get involved at whatever level of detail the decision requires — strategy, copy, architecture, a customer thread, a hiring call. I am not too senior for the detail. I am selective about which decisions earn that energy.
That is not hierarchical theater. I am not jumping into everything so people remember who owns the company. I jump in to gather the most context, make the call, encode what we learned, and get back out. The cultural expectation our team knows: I will not pretend distance equals leadership. When I care, I go deep. When I don't need to be there, I am not there.
Meetings — strategy open, operations in the sprint, then roam
I try to avoid standing meetings except in the sprints we need during great change. Most calendars are a museum of decisions that should have been a document, a scoreboard, or a one-thread Slack.
What I believe in instead:
- Open-ended strategy discussion — room to think, argue, and see around corners without a fake agenda forcing a premature vote.
- Operational meetings during major-change sprints — when we are evolving fast, we meet to move the work, not to perform status.
- Then I let them roam. When we are evolving that hard, I expend a tremendous amount of energy over a short period to bring the team through the transition — and then I let them run without me.
That rhythm is how you get both intensity and freedom. Burst of founder/CEO presence through the transition. Trust and ownership on the other side. If every week requires the same all-hands gravity, you never finished the transition — you institutionalized dependency.
How I spend a year
About eight months of the year, I spend fully analyzing every piece of our business — customers, customer performance, technology — then deconstruct and rebuild to refine. That is the long season: systems, soul, scoreboards, the uncomfortable rebuilds. It is how we stayed an operator company through 320 to 38 and how we keep refining the intelligence layer instead of renting someone else's ceiling.
About three to four months a year, I spend on business development, speaking events, and getting deep in the weeds of the industry — so I keep a pulse on where manufacturers, distributors, and industry leaders such as HARDI and Service Nation are actually going. I do not spend much time at typical industry sales and trade-show circuits.
The rooms that teach me more are the executive tables of major manufacturers and distributors. That is where the next five years show up early — capital plans, platform bets, what they fear, what they will fund. Most trade-floor conversations recycle last year's brochure. The executive table is where you hear the truth before it becomes a keynote theme for everyone else.
Failure modes
- Hierarchy cosplay. Layers that exist so information has to climb before a decision can move — while the CEO still ends up in the detail anyway.
- Standing meetings as culture. Calendar as proof of work. Status as substitute for ownership.
- Context hoarding. A core group that knows everything but does not pass it — then wonders why the edges wait for permission.
- Fake empowerment. "You own it" until the founder rewrites the outcome without teaching the why — see culture is accountability.
- Never leaving the transition. Permanent crisis mode so the team never learns to roam.
Proof
Our core group runs with full context across the company because that is the expectation — not a perk. When we hit a major transition, I go all-in for a concentrated stretch, then I get out of their way. When I need industry truth, I go where manufacturers and distributors decide, not where booths compete for foot traffic. When a decision matters to me, I dig to the bottom of it — whatever the org chart thinks that level "should" be.
That is Systems and Soul in operating form: systems so people can manage themselves; soul so context and care still travel when I am in a rebuild season or at an executive table three states away.
Action
Write down three decisions that still require you by habit, not by judgment. For each one: what context is missing for someone else to own it? Pass that context this week — in writing, with the scoreboard attached — and stay out unless you are choosing to go deep on purpose.
If you are redesigning how your leadership team runs through an AI-era transition, start with bringing the team with you, the CEO in an AI-first company, and Hands Up — or work with me when you want the operating conversation, not another standing meeting.