Before my first maternity leave, I hired the person who would cover me.
She was better at my job than I was.
Not slightly. Properly. She picked things up faster than I'd expected, ran the function cleanly, and within a few months had worked out things that had taken me far longer.
By every sensible measure, I'd made a great hire. I spent most of my leave convinced I'd made myself redundant.
Being good and being needed
Somewhere along the way, I'd let two things merge. Being good at my job, and being needed for it.
If someone else could do it better, what was I actually for?
It took me a long time to see it the other way round. I hadn't made myself redundant. I'd done the most valuable thing anyone can do in a business. I'd made part of it run without me.
That should have felt like a win. It felt like a threat.
Owners feel this more than anyone
Most owners will tell you they want a business that doesn't depend on them. Ask which role they'd hand over first and you'll get a confident answer.
Ask which role they'd find hardest to hand to someone better than them, and it goes quiet.
That second role is almost always the one that matters. It's the one that proves you're needed. It's usually the reason the hire keeps getting pushed to next quarter, with a perfectly reasonable excuse attached each time.
The handover test
Answer these honestly. Nobody's watching.
Which part of the business would you hate to give to someone better than you?
What would they change in their first month? If you can answer this one quickly, you already know what isn't working.
What would you do with the time you got back?
If question three makes you uncomfortable, that's the real thing to work on. Not the hire. What's waiting on the other side of it.
Hit reply and tell me which role you'd find hardest to hand over. I'll tell you mine.
Claire
