IAM2175 – Climbing the Jungle Gym: Lessons in Letting Go and Moving Forward

Gresham Harkless discusses the concept of letting go and delegating in business, using the metaphor of a jungle gym to illustrate the importance of releasing old strategies and tasks to reach new heights. Gresh shares a personal experience and insights from Art Radtke about the jungle gym metaphor, emphasizing the need to release old strategies and tasks to achieve growth and scaling in business.

Gresham highlights the significance of delegating tasks and empowering the team to drive business growth and innovation, emphasizing the need to focus on high-impact activities. He discusses the importance of releasing old strategies and mindsets, adapting to change, and adjusting business strategies for ongoing growth and innovation.

Gresham emphasizes the courage needed to let go, delegate, and embrace change in entrepreneurship, creating space for new ideas and innovations to propel business to the next level.

Gresham Harkless discusses the concept of letting go and delegating in business, using the metaphor of a jungle gym to illustrate the importance of releasing old strategies and tasks to reach new heights. Gresh shares a personal experience and insights from Art Radtke about the jungle gym metaphor, emphasizing the need to release old strategies and tasks to achieve growth and scaling in business.

Gresham highlights the significance of delegating tasks and empowering the team to drive business growth and innovation, emphasizing the need to focus on high-impact activities. He discusses the importance of releasing old strategies and mindsets, adapting to change, and adjusting business strategies for ongoing growth and innovation.

Gresham emphasizes the courage needed to let go, delegate, and embrace change in entrepreneurship, creating space for new ideas and innovations to propel business to the next level.

Pillars: Human Part of Business / Entrepreneurship
Traction Book: Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:00

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:28

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I'm super excited to bring to you a special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast. Our goal is always to give you the hacks, the nuggets, things that can help you to level up within your organization. And actually today I'm gonna talk a little bit about something that seems like it has nothing to do with business, which is how to do and learn from the simple act of climbing the jungle gym.

I know you heard me, jungle gym. The jungle gym is actually something that you think about more when you're in childhood and you're a kid, you're running around on a playground, you have the opportunity to go through the jungle gym.

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But what I really wanted to talk with you more around as the process and the importance of being able to let go, delegating and how important it is to understand that what might've served you to get to that point will not serve you moving forward. So to give you a little bit more behind the scenes, when I first joined and started my business, I joined a networking organization called BNI.

And BNI, there came a person who came often, and I found out later, was actually the owner of multiple BNI chapters. He was the executive director. His name Art Radtke. And Art would always come and provide lots of knowledge and information.

And I remember one specific thing that he told me when he was visiting the chapter, because I think he had clients that were actually within our specific chapter where he talked about the jungle gym. And I thought that that was something that really stuck with me and it stayed with me all of these years later. So I thought that that was something I definitely want to share with you and like what you can learn from being a jungle gym.

And if you really go through and think about it, there's different ways to basically say that. But I thought the jungle gym really stuck with me because I think so many times we can over-complicate business. And I think that business is simple, but it's not necessarily easy. And I think understanding the concept of things that we can learn from the jungle gym is absolutely huge.

So what I want you to do is just basically picture yourself on a jungle gym and to understand that in order for you to go further along on the jungle gym, you have to release your grip on the current rung to reach and go to the next. And the act of letting go and moving forward is one of the most powerful metaphors that you can think about related to entrepreneurship.

When we start a business, we often hold on tightly to every single aspect because we want to succeed so much, from product development to customer service to outsourcing. And while this hands-on approach is definitely necessary in the early stages, so if you're a builder, maybe you are within that range of, and if you're a founder of your organization.

But as the business starts to grow, you have to realize this can actually be the bottleneck. This could be the thing that will hold you back from growth and from scaling. And so there's many different terms related to that, but I really love the jungle gym just because I think it makes it so crucial if you've ever been on a jungle gym or ever seen children on a jungle gym, you realize that they can't go to the next rung unless they let go of the previous rung.

That's why letting go is so crucial. So just as you need to release one rung to grab the next rung on a jungle gym in business, you also need to let go of certain tasks, responsibilities in order for you to reach new heights.

Now this might mean delegating tasks to your team, automating processes, letting go of old strategies that no longer serve your goals. Think about hacks and nuggets and things that you can lean on, but also think about when you bring people on, you want to make sure that you give them the things that they need in order to succeed and to really do better than you did at that specific position.

But we get so wrapped up into holding on to the things that we have built or have done during the business or the success that we have even that we won't let go.

So learning more and more about the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS, there's a book and a CEO hack called Attraction, which talks a lot around EOS and what that means. They have a similar concept of letting go of the vine. So imagine that you're actually on a mountain, on that mountain.

And this is a story that is actually in the book, you know that in order for you to not continue to fall, someone comes on the edge while you're hanging on by your fingers on the edge of a mountain. They said that you have to let go. And during and in that story, it actually says the person's like, is there anybody else up there that can give me some advice?

And the reason that that really resonates is because the advice that we have is sometimes the advice that we don't want to take, which is to let go, which is to let go of that vine, let go of the rung, whatever it might be, so that you can go to that next level. We have to really understand that to move forward, you have to release what you're holding on so that you can grab the next one.

You cannot hold on to both rungs on that jungle gym and swing to the next rung. You have to let go of the previous rung for that to happen. Similarly, if you let go of the rung that is ahead of the other one, and definitely imagine that you have these two rungs, if you let go of the one that is ahead of the other one, then you're gonna just be stuck backwards.

So you have to let go of the previous rung, gain the momentum and go to the next rung. And when we hold on too tightly to what we worked on, we can prevent ourselves from making the leaps in growth and innovation that our organization definitely needs. And one of the most powerful ways that we can do that, letting go is delegating.

Delegating is not just about offloading tasks, get rid of all the things that you do. It's about really creating the culture to empower your team, to make strategic use of their talents, but also your talents as an organization.

So when you are ultimately setting yourself and your team up to delegate effectively, you free up time so that you can focus on more high-impact activities that ultimately will drive your business forward. In the EOS world, a lot of times that's the visionary versus the integrator.

But in every aspect of the business, as soon as you bring somebody on, you want to bring them on to replace you in some of the things that you're doing. But I think that empowering word is so huge because you allow them to have the opportunity to be able to accelerate and grow.

And think about if you spend your time and energy micromanaging on everything that people you're bringing on doing, you don't have the bandwidth to think strategically, innovate, and to seize new opportunities. So delegating will allow you the opportunity to kind of leverage those skills and talents, you know, for your team and leading to greater effective efficiency and productivity.

I think one of the big things that I've always really stuck with me is that whenever you're growing a business and you're able to take a vacation as much as you might feel guilty or you're able to kind of leave the business and the business not only continues to go, but it actually improves when you're not there.

That's actually the sign of a very healthy business. If you don't have that set up in your business, I would argue that you probably are maybe a little bit more of a builder than an architect. And that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't some aspects where you can walk away from.

It just basically means that there might be more room and opportunity for you to kind of grow everything you're doing now another crucial aspect of climbing further along on the jungle gym is understanding that what you did before won't necessarily get you there so as you go on the jungle gym, one of the things you don't always see is that it gets a little bit more difficult.

If you look down, you're further away, it seems harder, it seems more challenging. If you try to turn around and go backwards, it's further than it was when you started as you start to progress. So you have to really understand that the things that you did to get you where you are within your business and organization won't get you further along.

You have to let go, you have to do something that's different so that you can get different results. Strategies, tools, mindsets that served you well in the early stage of businesses might not be as effective as you scale. So just take this example. You might have personally handled all customer service inquiries whenever you started. Had a very hands-on approach. You knew exactly how you were going to build those relationships with your clients and your customers.

But the reality is that as your business grows, it's not going to be as sustainable for you to manage every single interaction within the business. It's important for you to let go and implement some SOPs, to actually have a team, some systems in place, so that you can move out of the business.

And often, when you are thinking about delegating and hiring that team, that team is probably better than you were at that specific role. And that's the idea. But I think one of the things that we can kind of run into when you are a builder and you're starting to make that transition, is you have a very set vision and weigh on like how it needs to be done, that you don't allow space for people to do it differently and sometimes even do it better by being able to do that.

So knowing that that's one big thing, know that it also means more than tasks and roles. It also includes your mindset and your strategies. You have to be open to changing, willing to adapt. It's crucial for ongoing growth. And just as you're going on the jungle gym, you need to adjust your grip and stance as you go higher and higher, further and further along.

You need to continually do that as well too when you're talking about your business as you're progressing. You need to adjust that grip, adjust the way that you're doing a specific act in your business. Maybe the tasks that you're focusing on in the very beginning aren't the same tasks that you're focusing on now.