Creating Leadership Role Clarity

Last week we had a very large Billionaire Code Summit. We had over 70 people from around the world, some traveling days to get here and a common theme came up over and over again in a room with mostly multimillion dollar CEOs. Here's what's interesting. I think it can help you and the company you're running today, get a lot more clarity and increase momentum like crazy.

I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum, so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future, and instead of just daydreaming of what could be we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

Last week was absolutely amazing. I love having our Billionaire Code Summit events. Now, I will admit that even though I coach lowering pressure and noise and not overwhelming yourself, I kind of killed myself last week. I spoke at the Capitalism Conference. I flew back to Austin, we had an event at my house on Wednesday night. Then I taught all day Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then we went racing cars on Saturday night. By the end of the day Saturday, I couldn't see straight and Sunday I did nothing, literally nothing. I watched movies on Netflix. Even my daughter, my 12-year-old Reagan was like, "Hey, dad, I've never seen you do this before." I don't know that I have. That's how exhausted I was. So I want to just fess up and say that I totally overdid it and I'm not going to do that next time. But that's not what this podcast is about.

This podcast is about a theme, and I'm going to share a few of these over the next few days, but there was a theme that came up over and over and over again while we were talking about growing businesses and scaling businesses. And just so you have perspective, the people who are in the room at my events all have something in common. They all have an opportunity that's big enough that they've decided to build a team around it and they have very similar issues. And here's what I've found. When an issue comes up over and over again in our room with our clients, it probably means that most of the people listening in my podcast have the issue. And here's what's interesting. A lot of the times we're not aware of it. So I want to share this one with you today because it was huge, and I think it's one of the biggest points of leverage you have once you start growing a team. And here it is, you have to have clarity around the leadership roles in your business.

This came up over and over and over again last week where what we saw was there was an entrepreneur running the company and an operator they were working with and there was not clarity around the roles, or there was a husband and a wife running the company and they were doing it together and there was not clarity around their two roles. And we even had cases where there was three partners in the room a couple of times where there was either a husband and wife running the business with an operator and the three of them did not have clarity. Or we even had one case where there was three partners that had started a business together with really a complete lack of clarity. And here's why this is so important for the business that you have clarity in the leadership roles is that if you don't, it makes it near impossible to scale without pain.

Because when you don't know who is doing what, when it's not clearly spelled out, which person is doing what, here's what happens. There's massive confusion in two places. One is there's confusion from your growing team as to who does what and who they should go to for what. So what ends up happening is most of the time people are taking a guess like, "I think I should go to this person," and they do, and you will have your wires crossed near constantly. It'll be frustrating for you, frustrating for the team members. A lot of times, unfortunately, the team member frustration isn't communicated because they don't know that they're doing anything or they aren't doing anything wrong, but they do feel frustration. So it's hard to say, "Hey, I'm frustrated, but I don't understand why." And here's what will happen if your team doesn't understand who's doing what though, they'll reach out less. They have less clarity, they'll fall out of momentum.

There'll be apprehensive about trying to do stuff and they'll stop taking risks and if you don't think it's that dramatic, take it from someone who's coached hundreds of companies. If there isn't clarity at the leadership level, it causes massive instability in the team. Now, it doesn't stop there. If there's not clarity at the leadership level, here's who it really causes instability for, the leaders. You, if you're leading a company with more than one person and there isn't finite clarity as to who's doing what and there isn't massive guardrails up as to who handles what, you will step all over each other. And if your friends or your husband and wife or you've been doing it for a long time, the problem is you'll actually tolerate it. You'll put up with it. You'll just keep thinking like, "Oh, we got to do better here. We'd have to make this better," and the reality is it's not going to get better until you sit down and separate the leadership roles and make it clear what functions each person does. I'll talk about that in a second.

Here's some of the other issues that happen. It's near impossible to scale because let's just look at this for what it is. We even have to get really esoteric here or really theoretical here. Let's just think through this. If there's more than one person who's in leadership on a team, if there's an entrepreneur and an operator, if there're partners, if there's a husband and wife and there isn't clarity around who does what, then neither one of you can go all in and create momentum for yourself. It gets worse if there isn't clarity around who does what, your team will be hesitant to fully support either one of you because they won't know how.

See, here's a fact. If your team doesn't understand your role, your responsibilities, the outcomes you're driving, the results that you're responsible for, they can't support those things. It's the same like if your team doesn't know how they can help you, they won't be able to. If your team doesn't understand what you're doing, they can't support you. So this is one of the most significant stumbling blocks or roadblocks or speed bumps or brick walls you hit when growing a business if there isn't clear responsibility between the people in charge, it just slows down the entire process of scaling the business, and then here's what happens. People on the team and people dealing with your company will start to make assumptions, "I dealt with Alex on this last time, I'll deal with him on it again." But the problem is if it's not clear who does what, those assumptions end up with extra communication and crossed wires and things going to the wrong person and decisions being made in a way where not everyone who's involved or responsible understands the decisions being made.

If you can't say right now, if you're listening to this and you can't definitively say, "The roles in leadership on my team are absolutely clear to my team," then you have a massive opportunity. This is not a problem and well it is. It's a problem. You need to get it fixed, but it's more of an opportunity because if your business is doing okay right now or if you're at least creating some forward progress, if you're making some money, if you're growing in any way and there's not clarity at the leadership level, I want you to understand something. This is a fulcrum on which if you put the lever of clarity, you can push down on one side and the growth and scale that comes out of this is going to be massive. Every time I have a partnership or a couple or a team or a leadership team clarify roles to the point where everyone understands exactly what's going on everything in the business gets easier.

And every time I've worked with a team where we finally get clarity at this level here's what's interesting. Each person on the leadership team actually calms down, gets out of fight or flight, becomes a lot more present, a lot more aware, a lot more capable of achieving what they want to achieve and they start making a lot more progress in a shorter period of time. Because when there isn't clarity at the leadership level, you're literally trying to grow the business with one hand tied behind your back. If there isn't clarity at the leadership level, you have to assume you're not getting as much support as you could. If there isn't clarity at the leadership level, you have to know that there is a lack of clarity on your team and a lack of clarity lowers the commitment with which people do their jobs. Lowers the competency that people have when they are executing. And it lowers the progress that they make when they do have clarity when they do understand who's doing what.

So here's what you have to do to fix this. If you have a leadership team right now, if you're on a partnership, a two-person partnership, a husband and wife team if you're a CEO or an entrepreneur who has an operator that's helping you, regardless of what position you're in, grab a whiteboard or a big piece of paper or somewhere where you can brainstorm the two of you. And if there's two of you, draw a line down the middle. If there's three of you who split the paper into thirds, or split the whiteboard into thirds and draw two lines. Put the names at the top of the columns and start filling in functionally, what do you already know each person should be doing? Functionally, how should the separation be on your team and who should be doing what? And start filling out those functions, creating that separation and creating the clarity.

And here's what I want you to know if this is your first time going into this, it may be easy. It may be fast. You may finish in 15 or 20 minutes and go, "Holy cow, I can't believe we didn't do this earlier. This is going to provide so much clarity. It's incredible." In about one out of five cases that happens. In about four out of five cases, or about 80%, this is hard. This actually takes a lot of work and what it does is as you go through this process of trying to separate roles, it reveals just how confusing your company is right now. And it reveals how much crossover and how much really stepping on each other's toes and doing each other's work and how much redundancy there is on how you have stuff set up. And when you start seeing the redundancy and the crossover and the confusion, it may be a little hard to unpack it and make it all work.

So here's my suggestion, given a couple of days. Go through an initial brainstorming period where you get the stuff that you know on either side. If there're things that you're still confused on, write them down as, "We need to decide on these things." Then sleep on it for a night. You're setting up roles and responsibilities you're going to have for a while. Sleep on it for a night, come back to it, discuss it, get clear. Get as clear as you can and if there's still places where you're unclear, talk to the members of your team that you trust and say, "Hey, here's where we're unclear. Where do you think these things should fall?" Because here's our goal. We want you to have a clear role, clear responsibilities, and understand exactly what results each one of you is driving. Because when you have that and the team has that, it eliminates all the pressure and noise of ambiguity.

It eliminates all the questions as to what you really should be doing and it gives you clarity and that clear outcome, which is one of the elements we always need to have for momentum. If you want to be in maximum momentum, you need three things. You've heard me say this before, you need a clear outcome, clear accountability and clear scoreboards or transparency so you understand what's going on. Well, here's what getting your roles and responsibilities does for you as an executive or as the leader who is one of the leaders in a company.

One, it creates a clear outcome because that role, that responsibility those was results are all clear outcomes too. It creates massive accountability, clarity, because by spelling it out, you now really understand what you're responsible for. And three, as you create the clear outcomes and the accountability, we can now create scoreboards and a clear path to understanding if you're making progress. This is a massive opportunity. If you don't have clarity around the leadership roles on your team, make it a point to get this done. In the next few days start to draft. Then move it towards a final solution. Then share it with your team and understand that role's, responsibilities, results that you're driving are living, breathing documents that are going to evolve as you evolve your organization.

So you're filling out what you have for today, knowing that it's going to change and shift and modify and you'll get more help. And as you scale, you'll offload things that are on your roles and responsibilities down to the point where you're doing only what you're really good at. And when you, as an executive, get to the point where you're doing only what you're really good at, you will be shocked at how fast your team, how fast your business and how fast your impact, your influence and your profitability grow.

But the way to get there, to the point where you're doing what you're really good at, is to document everything you're doing right now so that you understand it. Get clarity on the roles so you know what the status quo is, and then that way you can start moving things off of your responsibilities, modifying what you're doing and getting to the point to where you trim it down to when you're doing what you're good at, what makes you confident, what gets you excited, and what you know will move the business forward.

Leadership role clarity is one of the keys that will unlock massive momentum in your business, and it's one of the places that near every business has confusion, ambiguity, and massive constraint. This is a game changer. Go through the process, figure out your roles, share them with your team, and you will see the momentum in your entire organization go up almost immediately. If you're ready to start creating more momentum with your team. If you're ready to start building a real infrastructure for your company. And if you're ready to not just get role clarity, but get clarity around where the entire business is going so that you can show your team what the direction is and get them out in front of you, supporting you getting there instead of cleaning up the mess along the way. I want to help you stop being the biggest bottleneck in your company so that you can grow and grow fast.

If you're ready to change the way you're running your business and understand how to grow and scale a team without feeling like you have to do it all yourself, all you have to do is go to billionairecode.com/apply. Take a second right now and go through our application. Not only will you have an opportunity to set up a call with our team, but just our application process will reveal to you where there are opportunities to create momentum in your business. Go to billionairecode.com/apply. Answer a few questions. Set up a call with my team and let us help you build the business you've always known you are capable of creating; billionairecode.com/apply.