You Are the Central Brain. Your Team Is the Arms.

Last week we learned some wild things about the octopus. This week I want to focus on the biology of having 9 brains and what that unlocks.

First off, when you imagine an octopus, and realize that their tentacles are acting with a certain level of autonomy … you might begin to ask certain questions. Like, when I see an octopus escape from within a jar, by unscrewing the lid … did the tentacles decide to do that on their own? Did the octopus think of freedom and the tentacles just executed on that greater desire?

I don’t know, but I suspect it’s something more like the latter than the former. Imagine the potential.

So let’s explore this. The central brain sets the goal and the general direction, the arms execute, adapt, and respond to what they find. Independently. Simultaneously. Without checking in, without waiting for approval, without escalating.

If you’re hungry, and there might be food in a hole that you can shove your arm into … terrifying as that is to imagine, you’ll put your hand in and feel around … finding no hand-eating monster initially, maybe you push further in and feel for obstacles or inhabitants of this hole. You are constantly feeling, interpreting what you’re feeling, dealing with your fear, and reasoning through the whole thing.

If an octopus is hungry and faced with a hole that might contain food, the arm reaches into the crevice and doesn’t come out until it’s got food. The arm will figure things out on its own and the central brain is then free to keep an eye out for predators, or consider higher level problems. There might even be multiple arms on the food-seeking job.

In most small businesses, every decision must come to you before it can move forward. Every time this happens you’ve got people waiting around, unable to make progress until that decision is made. They are the arm in the hole that might devour them, and the longer it takes you to understand what they’re experiencing, the worse everything gets.

As you read this, I’m sure many of you are thinking about your own firms. Thinking about all the myriad work that can’t move without your involvement. And hopefully realizing the effect that has on your business’s potential.

Few people design their firm to operate with a single point of failure that looks surprisingly like themselves. This reality is born out of what got them to where they are. The business actually was just them. They necessarily were the bottleneck because it was just them. But as they grew, and their business expanded, that architecture didn’t grow and expand to accommodate the change.

You are the central brain. Your team represents your arms or tentacles. Imagine what you would be able to accomplish if your team could act independently with a little guidance.

You could form a strategy, and they could execute on it while you are able to focus on higher level concerns … like the predators that swim in your waters, or the food that will keep you alive.

Attorneys and financial advisors face a particular version of this. Your firm is built on your judgment, your expertise, and your relationships. The architecture of dependence feels inevitable. But there is a difference between the work that genuinely requires you and the decisions that could belong to someone else entirely. Most owners have never separated those two things.

When you go about the rest of your day, in the quiet of your car or office, name one decision that crosses your desk regularly that someone else could own entirely. Not help with. Own.

This week, hand it over completely and don’t take it back … and then circle back and let me know how it went.