Let Them Shovel the Snow: Leadership Means Letting Go

I have a confession to make:

Sometimes, when I delegate a task, I want to take it back almost immediately. Not because the person is incapable. Not because they’re doing anything wrong but because it’s not how I would do it.

It’s not as fast. It’s not as efficient. And I know that if I just did it myself, I’d be done already—perfectly formatted, spreadsheet color-coded, with a SQL script ready to roll and a dashboard built before they finished the first draft.

But here’s the thing: That’s not leadership. That’s a bottleneck.

The Curse of Competence

The better you are at something, the harder it is to let others struggle through it. Especially when you’ve built your entire career on getting things done in high-pressure environments.

At SHIELD Illinois, this became evident fast. We were scaling at a pace no one had ever seen—7 million tests, 13 labs, over 2,000 collection sites, a chartered airplane flying specimens to Kentucky, robots built from scratch, 747s of consumables airlifted through customs. I wanted to do everything.

And for a while, I tried. But I couldn’t. Not if I wanted the whole thing to work.

I Didn’t Learn by Watching

I didn’t learn operations from a textbook. I learned because someone gave me a project I had no business owning—and I figured it out.

• I discovered the right Excel formula because nobody had time to help.
• I learned SQL because I needed answers no canned report could give me.
• I went back and got an MBA because the problems I was facing outpaced the tools I had.

And I’m grateful someone trusted me enough to hand me those problems in the first place.

The Shovel That Stuck

Here’s the part that still catches me off guard:
After everything we did at SHIELD—all of it—the thing I think about the most isn’t a robot or a plane. It’s a snow shovel.

Labs in 60 days. A Senator arranging CBP inspections on a runway. A $400K DNA sequencer. A crane dropping a generator on a rooftop. I knew all of it. I was in it, every step.

But then there was the shovel...

When we were shutting down and cleaning out the Depot, I noticed a beat-up red-handled snow shovel. I hadn’t authorized that. Hadn’t approved it. Hadn’t thought about it. And yet… someone did.

Someone realized we had a physical location and snow would fall. So they got a shovel. And I didn’t have to do a thing. Building a system where others can—so you don’t always have to. That’s leadership.

Yes, I kept the shovel. It sits on my front porch every winter.

Final Thought: Let Them Build Their Version

This is the quiet sequel to Lead From Your Position, Not Theirs.

It’s the part where you could jump back in—but you don’t. Because you know the point isn’t doing the work. The point is building a team that doesn’t need you to. Even if it’s slower.
Even if it’s messier. Even if it’s not how you would’ve done it.

If they don’t get to try, they don’t get to learn. If you never let go, they never grow.