Elfried Samba's Linkedin Analytics

I’ll be honest. 
When I first started stepping away from the day-to-day… I used to feel a strange satisfaction when things broke in my absence. 
It made me feel important. 
Like I was the glue holding it all together. But the truth is harsher: 
Every time something breaks when you’re not there, it’s a sign you’ve failed to build a system that works without you. That’s not leadership. 
That’s being a bottleneck. 
A liability. Because when progress depends on your availability, your time, your personal input - the whole business becomes fragile. 
You become the single point of failure. Let me be clear: 
If your team needs you to approve every small move, you’re not scaling excellence - you’re scaling dependence. 
That’s ego. Not leadership. Real leadership is when: - The thinking happens without you. - The decisions happen without you. - The momentum continues without you. Not because you’re not needed. 
But because you’ve built a system that doesn’t collapse when you’re not in the room. If you step away and things grind to a halt, you haven’t built a high-performing team. You’ve built a fragile operation propped up by your control. And that’s on you. Every time something breaks in your absence, it’s feedback: - A system isn’t clear. - Accountability isn’t owned. - Trust isn’t built. It’s a signal to fix the machine, not to double down on micromanaging. Because here’s the harsh reality:
 A business that can’t run without you is a business that can’t grow beyond you. Let that sting. 💡George Stern