Give Away Your Legos

Give away your responsibilities to scale

Insight from First Round Review

Be sure to have the ‘Give Away Your Legos’ talk as the business scales.

Picture this: you're building a massive Lego tower. Each Lego represents an individual's responsibility.

In the early days, everyone is juggling a bunch of different responsibilities. Eventually, you’ve got to pass some Legos to the next person.

New folks join, and everyone's instinct is to cling to their Legos for dear life.

Ignore that urge.

You need to let go of that little piece you built and eye a bigger challenge.

If you are a manager, try to make your direct reports comfortable by:

• Encouraging them to look for a taller, cooler tower to build. I bet the employee will drop their old Legos if you challenge them with a huge project

• When the whispers of “Why did we hire them?” or “Why’s she taking over?” start, encourage your team not to act on their knee-jerk emotions. Let them simmer for a bit, then reassess.