I’m regretting sending an email to my entire team. Here is the email I just sent to my team in response to our CRM being broken due to a PHP error.

I fixed it. HQ is up. Ta da!!! And for my next trick…

Are you guys trusting your team to get the job done?

These last few days we’ve been dealing with a forced upgrade to our servers from PHP 5.3 to 5.6. In the process a lot of old php scripts, many of which I wrote 10+ years ago broke. I’ve found myself pulled out of my daily routine and back with my hands in code fixing things.

Now, why am I coding when I have a team of 20 competent team members to help out? Great question, and it’s one that I’ve been asking myself today. I find great comfort in doing some of these old tasks. Running DB queries, breaking out linux command line skills. I’m fast and I love the challenge of solving the problem. But in me doing this, I’m causing a lot of problems. Here is what came clear to me after hitting send on that email…

1. I’m preventing my team from getting experience in handling these issues. Both from a technical standpoint and a customer service perspective.

2. I’m demonstrating to my team that I do not trust them to get the job done or believe that they can do it. The worst part is, what if they start to think that’s actually true?

3. I’m creating a business that requires ME to run it and increasing the likelihood that a future vacation will be interrupted because “only Mike knows how to do that…”

4. I’m robbing my business of me focusing on the high value activities that truly only I can do at this point.

So where in your day today should you be giving something to your team instead of doing it yourself. What thing makes you feel MOST uncomfortable at the idea of handing it off?

My challenge to you today is, hand it off.

Hand it off and get back to work on the stuff only you can do. This is why you have a team.

P.S. If you are looking for a way to jump start your agency, you can check out our Digital Agency Momentum Kit (DAMK). The momentum kit gives you the boost you need to step up, lead, and believe in what you do. This kit will help you grow your business and increase sales — no matter what’s going on in the rest of the world. And, it’ll help you inspire others to do the same.

Mike Schmidt
Founder
AgencyCoach