If Your Team Still Needs You, You Haven't Built a System

If people escalate every decision to you, if releases stall when you're on leave, if your inbox is the bottleneck - you haven't built a team. You've built a dependency with better documentation.

Most leaders think delegation means handing off tasks. They create templates, write procedures, automate the boring bits. Then wonder why nothing moves without them. The work flows faster, but the authority and risk still concentrate at the top. The team still waits for your sign-off, your judgment call, your safety net.

That's not a system. That's you with extra steps.

The Real Problem Isn't Who Does the Work