🔓 You should not be needed

An effective process, team, or organization should be able to continue on if any individual steps away for a bit, or forever. But, most people are insecure and like to be needed, so subconsciously structure things to require them to be present for things to proceed -- the gatekeeper or authoritarian mindset.

A few ideas:

• Share everything you know with the widest possible audience.
• Document why.
• Automate tedious processes so anyone can execute them. This also serves as good documentation.
• Encourage others to do things you do.
• Prefer transparency for accountability rather than oversight or status reports.

Creating a process or culture that can function just fine without a single point of dependency makes that person more valuable than ever, and frees them up to do other higher-value things.