We recently sponsored a Great Boss® Workshop in Salt Lake City and I showed up focused on delivering my 10-minute intro of Strety. With 40 attendees and a room full of EOS Implementers™, many who hadn’t seen Strety in action yet, I was hoping to spark some interest. (Mission accomplished.)
What I didn’t expect was to walk away with something even better for myself: a much-needed personal reminder, powered by two classic EOS tools, Delegate and Elevate™ and Clarity Breaks™.
Delete & Elevate is good for everyone
Even though I’ve already built and sold successful businesses, as the current co-founder of a growing 13-person company, I still find value in coming back to the basics.
The EOS Delegate and Elevate™ tool is simple but powerful. Basically, you list all the stuff you’re working on and organize it into quadrants based on how much you like that work, and how good you are at it. If something is on the bottom left quadrant (don’t like it/not good at it), you delegate asap. And essentially anything that doesn’t fall under “love it/great at it” is the next to go.
EOS ® tools like Delegate and Elevate aren’t one-and-done exercises and they evolve with you over time. Right now, as Strety is scaling quickly, the reminder couldn’t have come at a better time.
We’ve gone from just a handful of people (which meant me wearing a lot of hats) to a great team of 13. And I realized that there was a lot of rope I was still holding onto when I applied the Delegate and Elevate tool.
Here’s what surfaced for me:
- Cybersecurity: We’re pushing hard on SOC 2 compliance and I’d been shouldering the responsibility. But after stepping back, I realized I was the wrong person for the job. The next week after the conference I handed it over to one of our senior engineers and we’re now just months way from wrapping it up. Turns out, when you get out of the way, brilliant people do brilliant work — a fundamental principle of delegating and elevating!
- Marketing: This one was personal. I love marketing — especially branding and messaging. Because deep down as a product guy, telling the story around what we’re building lights me up. But the truth is, marketing at Strety sits squarely under sales/revenue (and it does in the Accountability Chart™). My co-founder has a better pulse for what he wants to do to really grow leads and I couldn’t be a bottleneck and be inserted in that team’s flow anymore. Certainly not at this speed of growth. I had to give marketing up.
- CFO + HR: I’ve been holding on to these functions, mostly out of necessity. But it’s clear we’re going to out-grow this approach (and I don’t really enjoy this work either — classic Visionary!). So I’ve started the process of finding someone to help here — no hire yet, but there’s clarity now, and that matters.
Clarity Breaks = Growth Fuel
The other big reminder? Clarity Breaks™.
Just stepping away to think — without distractions, without fire drills — is so powerful. That quiet space let me see what needed to shift and was a big part of helping me Delegate and Elevate. It wasn’t about fixing a crisis; it was about aligning my energy with what Strety needs most from me right now.
Your clarity break is a regularly scheduled time to meet with yourself and a blank notepad (or in my case, an easy weekend run on my favorite trail here in Utah).
Every weekend in the non snow filled months, I go for an easy long run on a flat trail near my home. I’m a Zone 2 believer so the run is slow. And with enough time (15 minutes +) my mind is clear and I can start solving problems calmly internally. I take my phone with me so as ideas surface, I can jot them down while jogging. What’s also a nice perk about this run is that it takes me about 10 minutes to get to the trailhead so I already have some transition time from family life to Clarity Break time, much different than hitting the treadmill at the house.
I had forgotten how helpful these long runs are and how truly they are my Clarity Breaks. And though I’m proud we run a calm company admist this fast growth, I still need to make sure I get implement these Clarity Breaks and always go back to the basics with the EOS toolbox.
That’s the beauty of EOS: the tools scale with you. Whether you’re a brand-new integrator or a CEO with a few EOS years behind you, there’s always something to reapply, reframe, or rediscover.
Grateful for EOS Tools, Grateful for the Journey
I left that workshop with more than I expected: a fresh perspective, renewed energy, and confidence that our team is ready for what’s next. All because I revisited tools I already knew and saw them with fresh eyes.
To the implementers, the EOS Worldwide® community, and our team — thanks for helping me keep learning and growing. As an EOS ® nerd and eternal student, I’m always grateful to (re)learn something new. Like my friends at EOS ® say: grow or die.
Onward.
