Build benches, not stars

It is tempting to keep critical knowledge centralized. It feels efficient. It feels like leadership. It is neither.

The leader's job is to make themselves progressively less necessary to the daily operation. Knowledge gets documented. Decisions get delegated. Authority gets distributed.

Depth is the quietest form of leadership. A team with five people who can run the play is a team that survives a hospital visit, a family emergency, a market downturn.

It is also the team people stay at, because they know they are being built up rather than used up.