Entrepreneurs Think They Are Responsible for Everything, So They Are

Have you ever looked at a door, any door, and said to yourself, “I can make that better.”? Try it now… Strange, isn’t it? If you really focus hard and look at a door and try to imagine a way to make the door work better, it might seem unnatural or take a sincere effort for some time.

That imagination is not difficult to an entrepreneur, it’s completely natural, and how they live responsible for the world around us every single day. Entrepreneurs are natural perfectionists.

Perfectionism is found in those who can find a problem in anything – earth’s pessimists really. A perfectionist is constantly looking for the asymmetry in the world, the gaps, or broken pieces where their solving skills would be of good use. They enjoy few things ‘just the way they are.’ A-Type personalities, or perfectionists, are people who do not necessarily always have or even need purpose, but are people who simply feel obligated to fix, or become fixated on every imperfect thing in front of them.

Quite frankly, it doesn’t even need to always be broken, but even looked at with the imagination of what could make it better. The obsession to problem solve or improve anything from a broken kitchen drawer to their own experience at the hospital brings them into a rabbit hole that becomes their career. Long story short, they make themselves responsible for everything by adopting problems, creating brands around them, and then selling them to people who will soon rely on those solutions.

Perfectionists often find themselves someday as entrepreneurs; some by a calling or greater purpose, and others encountered something and told themselves with full conviction, ‘I can make this better.’

While this trait is a blessing to start trailblazing, it’s also a curse that manifests itself while climbing the mountains. For example, are you or do you know an entrepreneur who struggles to delegate tasks? I’m willing to bet that if the answer is yes, that entrepreneur is a perfectionist who thinks that they can always do it better – whatever the ‘it’ may be. Sounds familiar now, doesn’t it? Admitting someone else can make it better than us is painful and wrong, because we’re always the ones who can make anything better. Consider it an entrepreneur’s night vision – we have our own ‘problem vision.’

Delegation of tasks may be one of the most difficult events for a founder to face, the acceptance that they will not be the one to make ‘that problem’ better and submitting to the fact that someone else may be able to do that for them.

As an entrepreneur who struggles to delegate, I also understand that it is the number one most important aspect to growing and scaling a business. Without the realization that we will always see asymmetry in work, problems in what lays before us, we’ll never accept what it means to let someone else do the fixing. To reach the point of successful delegation through hiring, entrepreneurs need to almost see entrepreneurship as a disease – the obsession with finding fault in everything before us – an incurable disease that began our company and makes us who we are, and our solutions (as a team) so great.

If you’re struggling with delegation, here are some tips to help you reach acceptance:

1. If there was such thing as perfect, every generation would invent less. But with many perfectionists and new problems daily, humans simply invent more.
2. If you hire entrepreneur-minded people, you should be able to trust them to solve your company’s biggest problems. They have problem vision and imagination too!
3. If you can’t hire internally, outsource it! No one is depending on you for their entire livelihood when you outsource, and they’re a contracted team of professionals who can handle anything you throw at them.
4. Delegation is required to scale – pretending you can be every department is comical and would make you a living legend. Jeff Bezos is not driving the Amazon delivery trucks because he needs to be at his Board meetings.
5. If you pay the people you’re delegating to, you won’t feel so badly for delegating the tasks – it’s their job!
6. By delegating, you’re no longer solving the outside world problems. You can focus on your team and help them, as people, solve their own problems, which in the end helps you solve the world’s problems. Congrats – you’re officially a leader!