Staff your liabilities to expand your impact

Executive overview

Growth stalls when leaders try to do everything themselves. The fix is identifying what you're weak at and hiring specifically to cover those gaps.

Staff your liabilities — your company is one brain, and every weak area limits the whole.

Why self-awareness is the starting point

• You must know what you're not good at before you can staff it
• Believing you're good at everything blocks you from growing
• Knowing what you don't like doing is equally useful — those are staffing targets too

How staffing liabilities scales a company

• Don Miller grew his company from ~$250k (low profit) to ~$10M by hiring an execution-focused operator
• Visionary leaders paired with execution-focused operators create a complete "left and right brain"
• As you scale, regularly audit the team: which capabilities are thin, and where do you need to hire?

The ongoing practice

• Treat the whole company as one brain — identify which areas of that brain are underdeveloped
• Keep asking: what is our biggest liability right now, and how do we staff or overcome it?
• This discipline keeps a company healthy at every stage of growth