Before leadership was such a buzz word, I attended a first level supervisory course that left a piece of advice forever embedded in my brain. Your key job as a manager is to make yourself redundant.
This pearl may date back to the ‘80s but it’s still a key fundamental for leadership. It’s about building systems, processes and more importantly your team so that your role simply isn’t needed anymore. The team, all capable leaders in their own right, basically take over.
I’ve used this thinking in many situations over the years and not just about being a leader of teams.
If you’re a business advisor, isn’t your goal to make your clients so knowledgeable, confident and networked that they don’t need you anymore? If not, do you really care about your clients or are they just a meal ticket?
I presented a paper at a conference of disability support organisations titled “my ambition is the demise of your organisation”. The argument I raised was that if these organisations really accomplished their goals, people with disability would flourish without needing ‘bought’ support. Sure, it may never happen but if the organisations has a strategy of making themselves redundant, then everything they do would be about fostering independence, empowerment and inclusion.
Seeing the discussions around AI made me think more about this. Is our move for AI:
- Just the shiny new toy?
- The ultimate attempt to make ourselves redundant?
- or have we simply given up on our ability to empower others to have the skills to do so?
This is all hypothetical and in reality, it’s a mixture of all three points plus the lure of fame and fortune.
Thinking about this issue has made me realise that we really do need to explore our personal ‘why’ for making ourselves redundant. Simply replacing us with a machine will never empower our teams or the people we support without that intent being part of the machines DNA.
The Optimistic Cynic 