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A few years back, I got pulled into a meeting that wasn't mine.
I was a fractional CMO then. Something needed to be communicated to another part of the business, and the manager whose job that was sat two seats down from me.
The ask came to me anyway. Here's the reason:
"You're the only one who can say it so they'll actually hear it."
I won't lie... It felt good.
Because I had earned it, right? I knew how that place worked by then. Who needed what. Which words worked with which team. Someone had finally said it out loud, and I thought, "I'm in. They trust me. This is what it looks like when you're doing the job right."
So I did it.
And the next time something needed saying, they came to me again.
It wasn't my job. It was in the job description of the manager sitting two seats down. Every time I did it well, they got one less chance to learn how.
Today I want to talk about that compliment. Being the only one who can do something feels like proof you're valuable. Usually it means you're stuck.
And you can be the best at something without being the only one who can do it.
Let's get to it.
How you become the only one
It never shows up as a demand. It almost always shows up as a compliment. So sneaky...
Nobody said "do this instead of your actual job." They said I was the best person for it. That was true. Saying yes cost me twenty minutes and bought me a room full of people who thought I was indispensable.
They asked me again.
The first time it was one email. The second time they wanted me in the meeting where the decision got made. The third time I was walking the work over to the other team and answering their questions about it.
After that, nobody asked who should handle it. It was assumed I would.
When they first told me I was the only one who could do it, that wasn't true. The manager could have done it. They had done it before I ever showed up. It became true later, BECAUSE I did it enough times that they never did.
If you work for yourself, there's no manager in this story and it happens anyway. I’ve lived that too.
A client asks for something you weren't brought in to do. You handle it, because you can, and because it's faster than explaining why you shouldn't. The scope widens. It stays yours, because nobody has a reason to change that. And the better you get at it, the more of it arrives.
Nobody is doing this to you. Every step was a good decision made by a competent person, including you.
The cost shows up in two places.
The first is the person who stopped learning.
The second is you. The time is the obvious cost. The bigger one is what you didn't get to do, what you didn't get to build while you were busy. You're not getting more experience in the problem you actually want to solve. You're not collecting proof that you solve it. A year goes by, you are exactly as known for your best work as you were before… and maybe more tired.
If that is the shape of your week and you run your own business, that is the problem GPS is built to solve: catapultnorth.com/gps.
The same thing, at my house
This turned out not to be just a work problem.
My youngest, Dash, does jiu-jitsu, and the gi has to be tied a certain way.
The tie is hard for adults, and it's even harder for small hands. He gets the belt twisted, loses one end, starts over. I can do it in four seconds. So for a while, I did.
Then I noticed I was doing the same thing I had done at work. I was faster, so I kept doing it, and he never got to.
So I stopped. I stood there and let it be slow, and let him get frustrated, and let his fingers get tangled.
And I learned something about my kid that I had no other way of learning. Dash works things out by physically doing them (it’s called kinesthetic learning). Watching me or being told does nothing for him. He has to get his own hands in it and fail a few times, and then he has it.
I could have tied that belt for another two years and never known that about him.
Stepping back sounds like giving something up and boy…. does it feel like it. It's also how you find things out, because you can't watch someone learn while you are doing it for them.
And you can't find out whether your work can exist without you in the room while you are always in the room.
Takeaway
What are you the fastest at? And who hasn't had a chance to get good at it, because you are always the one who does it?
If someone comes to mind, you already know the next move. It will feel like letting the work get done worse for a while. That feeling is the price, and it's smaller than another year of the same.
Not caring less. Holding less.
(I keep this on a sticky note at my desk)
I'm always rooting for you. See you next week.
-Colleen
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