The Invisible Ceiling on Company Growth
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Note: Scroll down to check out our new section How to Have Better Meetings. Hi Reader, A while back, I worked with a CEO who was brilliant, relentless, and exacting. His startup was breaking into its first $10M year. But every time they got momentum, something bottlenecked. Engineering wouldn’t ship on time. Sales didn’t close fast enough. Leadership hires weren’t stepping up. The problem? He had an answer for everything. In meetings, he’d jump in before the head of product could finish a sentence. He re-wrote client emails. He hovered over strategy decks like a stormcloud. After one executive offsite, I asked him a simple question: “What does your team have to do to win?” He paused. “I don’t know,” he said. Then, after a long silence, he admitted: “...I have to let them.” I was astonished and impressed with his self-recognition. It turned out that their growth ceiling wasn’t strategy or product-market fit. It was the leader’s unconscious belief that if he didn’t control the outcome, the company would fail. But here’s the paradox: If your team can’t grow, your company won’t grow. And your team can’t grow if you’re always catching the ball before it hits the ground. Mistaking control for competenceOne of the most common traps in early leadership is mistaking control for competence. On the surface, things run smoothly: Decisions get made, problems get solved, crises get contained. But underneath, something vital is missing: your team’s growth. High-functioning teams require room to fail, learn, and rise again. Without that space, talent withers and initiative dies. And when every important decision routes through you, the organization slows to your bandwidth. You end up burned out and alone at the top. Often, this pattern is fueled by the leader’s unconscious beliefs:
These stories may sound reasonable, even admirable. But they build an invisible ceiling on what your company can become. If success isn’t clearly defined and jointly owned, your team will feel unsafe to make mistakes, because they don’t have a way to measure success—outside of trying to read your mind. And if your team feels unsafe making mistakes, your team will stop taking risks. Without risk, there’s no innovation. And without innovation, your company won’t scale. In other words: You can’t build a championship team by constantly benching your players. Big Love, Joe This newsletter is brought to you by The Council. |
Art of Accomplishment
Hi Reader, Now that we’ve begun to identify some of your avoided emotions, we’re going to take this process to the next level. This is the unlock that can create some incredibly powerful transformations. Because whether you’re aware of it or not, your mind is constantly telling you stories about your emotions. But many of those stories aren’t true. The Boy and the River There was once a boy who was terrified of the river. He had fallen in once as a child and remembered the cold shock, the...
Hi Reader, Now that we’ve begun to identify some of your avoided emotions, we’re going to take this process to the next level. This is the unlock that can create some incredibly powerful transformations. Because whether you’re aware of it or not, your mind is constantly telling you stories about your emotions. But many of those stories aren’t true. The Boy and the River There was once a boy who was terrified of the river. He had fallen in once as a child and remembered the cold shock, the...
Hi Reader, In our last lesson, we explored the Golden Algorithm. We saw how the emotions we avoid don’t just go away. Instead, they come back and end up unconsciously driving all our decisions. And as a result, our lives. Today, we’re going to take the first step in undoing the Golden Algorithm. We will walk you through exactly how to find some of these “blind spot” emotions. The Jester There was once a town jester who loved to dance about wildly in the streets. He would wail, laugh, and cry...