How to Step Away from the Day-to-Day Operations of Your Company

AVAlexander Volchek

What's the main sign that you, as an entrepreneur and business owner, are ready to step away from day-to-day operations and operational management? Here we explore scaling businesses and owners as people: their inner growth, spiritual, natural, and psychological development, and the development of their lives. What leads them to greater scale. The task isn't simply to step away from operations. As an owner, I also need to make that decision and recognize that I'm capable and ready: ready to step away and let the entire company set sail on its own. There's always an interesting barrier here. On one hand, someone says they want to step away. On the other, they start inventing countless reasons and circumstances that prevent it. I've spent twenty years in business and management, in large technology, education, and trading businesses. I've helped thousands of people through mentoring and personally experienced both needing to step away from operations and being deeply involved in management as a hands-on CEO.

I've experienced being CEO both without owning the company and as its owner. I've also been connected to a business without being involved in its operations or management at all, and encountered all these variations with other people. Two key things need to happen before you can start moving away from operational work. First, you need to love your business enormously.

If you love your business, you have a wonderful, living feeling about it. Love doesn't mean attachment or spending eight or nine hours there every day. Love means understanding that your business is great. On the other hand, you need to be emotionally ready for absolutely any actions necessary for you not to be there. Feeling and sensing that readiness is probably the hardest part. When you've reached and recognized that state, you love the business on one hand, and on the other you say, “I'm ready. I'm ready for an employee who's worked with me for fifteen years to be fired. I'm ready for the automation system I once configured to be removed. I still think it's awesome, although deep down I know something's wrong with it. I'm ready for the management team to change the incentive system and even some salaries. I'm ready for a new strategy, action plan, completely new circumstances, and opportunities. I'm ready for my team to be restructured, for a different style, design, or font, for services to be delivered differently and products to be created differently.”

“I'm ready for something different.” Stepping away from operations doesn't mean you stop participating if you remain the owner. You participate as an owner: perhaps an active owner or managing partner, a board member, or someone who attends meetings, visits the company frequently, or even performs a specific role. It means the business doesn't depend solely on you. You can take time off without worry. Some people say it's wonderful when a CEO can take a week or ten days of vacation. I've never understood that. I first became a real, strong leader in 2005, almost nineteen years ago. And I always—

years ago. I've always allowed myself to take vacation whenever I wanted, for as long as I wanted, whether I was an employee, a hired manager, a partner, or a deeply involved partner serving as CEO. I ran substantial companies: Megaplan, GeekBrains, Business Molodost, Agro24, and iTec Group. I led many international technology development projects and the growth of product markets. I've done many kinds of management. Throughout, I was always clearly aware that I could take vacation at any time. That possibility means allowing for the company's system to develop without me, trusting it, feeling good about it, and loving it. When both sides are present—love for your business and trust that different things can happen within the company—you need to detach. What does that require? Outside support, which involves several elements.

Find two mentors, or at least one, or someone with whom you can be a student. Either they're much stronger than you across the board in business, approaches, and thinking, or interacting and working with them puts you in a state of readiness to do everything they say. Second, start discussing your desire to step away from operations with people around you, your business circle, acquaintances, and friends. Discuss how it could happen and what they think. Third, begin with your business partner—

if you have one, or your partners, discussing it openly, honestly, and sincerely. Say the time has come and it needs to happen. What to do when another partner remains in operations and doesn't want to leave while you do is a separate subject. We'll explore it separately. If you have questions or difficulties with that, write in the comments. Write any questions about stepping away from operations, thinking, or difficulties you're facing. I'll personally answer every comment. Try to describe in a little more detail who you are, what you do, your situation, difficulty, and question. I'll also try to keep gathering this information and addressing it in videos, providing information and answers. Again: you've begun working with mentors, started the discussion among people around you, and set it in motion among your partners. Fourth, start processes and actions that enable your company to work without you.

What does that involve? The most important thing for the company to work without you, and for you to step away from operations, is the team running it. In fact, it's probably that one key person who runs everything. But there's always a combination involving the team. If you have only one incredibly great person, there is no team. That would probably be a rather strange structure. Most likely, it's then that person's team rather than yours. There are always combinations: someone steps in and replaces you in your role, and a team grows and rises alongside them. What if you can't currently see or identify that person, aren't sure they're on your team, or don't know exactly whom to replace or how? That's absolutely fine. If you start with the first three actions—mentors and your circle of acquaintances—

partners and your circle of acquaintances. Start discussing this with your partners. The issue will begin to resolve, and the team will take shape. We'll talk extensively about teams. Choosing, envisioning, and forming the right team is a distinct art, system, and creative process. It's a clearly described process or system with defined parameters, while also being something emotional and individual within each person that can't be described or structured. Building a good team combines a system with knowing people and understanding how they relate to one another. I've stepped away from operations without loving the business. I've stepped away while being emotionally unready for changes to what I'd built inside it. It's incredibly difficult to accept that what you've spent years doing may change, be destroyed, disappear, or go away. It's a personal foundation I created in the business so I wouldn't lose myself. But that foundation can become a point of destruction for the business, like a weakened chair leg.

So balancing love for the company and business with the understanding that I'm emotionally ready for what I've created to change, and knowing that everything in life changes—that's precisely the right time to act. Stepping away from operations creates entirely different possibilities. It allows the business to scale. It provides—

opportunities to scale the business, create new businesses, and earn many times more money. It gives me new calm and emotional control. Most importantly, it gives me freedom and status: the status of someone who built a business that works without them. Subscribe if you enjoyed this. Reflect in the comments on how you view operations and what you've experienced. When did you miss the moment when you could have stepped away? When did stepping away cost you an entire business, a great deal of money, or a partnership? Write about when you couldn't resolve that partnership issue, when friends turned away and hostility began coming from others. Or how difficult it was to find an outside person offering the right advice and recommendations, because choosing a mentor is such an incredibly difficult subject! I'll answer every comment. See you in the next videos.