Most founders who say they can't step back from the day-to-day describe it as a team problem. The people aren't ready. The bench isn't deep enough. Someone isn't performing at the level the business now requires. Operations advisor Lia Garvin, who spent her early career inside team operations at Microsoft, Apple, and Google before moving to advise founders directly, has heard that framing enough times to know it's usually incomplete. Across engagements with businesses of roughly three to fifty employees, the bottleneck is rarely the team's capability. It's the founder's decision-holding.
The pattern is specific: a founder wants out of the day-to-day, but a team member brings them a decision, and the founder makes it — not from a need for control, but because answering felt faster than not answering. "The biggest challenge is the founder wanting to replace himself, not wanting to be in the day-to-day," Garvin says. "But still being responsible for all the decisions." Each answered question reinforces the exact dependency the founder is trying to dismantle. As she puts it, "It becomes impossible to replace yourself if you're still doing the work that you're paying other people to also be doing."
This is where the diagnosis usually goes wrong. A founder feels the friction, assumes it's a hiring or capability issue, and starts looking for a stronger team or a senior hire — sometimes a COO. Garvin's read, built across dozens of engagements rather than a single company's story, is that alignment is often closer than founders assume. Once expectations and context are actually documented, team members tend to be more willing and more capable than the founder gave them credit for. "A lot of the issues are more salvageable than maybe we thought," she says.
That reframe changes where a scaling CEO should spend the next dollar and the next quarter. Documenting decision rights and expectations is cheaper and faster than a senior hire, and it addresses the actual constraint. A new hire doesn't dissolve a founder's habit of answering every question that lands in their inbox.
Garvin draws a sharp distinction that reframes a common executive anxiety: the fear of becoming a micromanager. The failure isn't about temperament — it's about when a founder intervenes. Hand off work with no parameters, no walkthrough of what a good outcome looks like, no context on the reasoning behind a decision, and the founder ends up correcting after the fact, which reads as micromanagement even when the intent was to delegate. The fix isn't holding back more. It's front-loading the parameters so intervention isn't needed later. Founders who skip that step aren't protecting their team's autonomy; they're setting up a correction cycle that erodes it.
Documentation and clear parameters solve one layer of the problem. A second, harder layer sits underneath most recurring team issues: an overdue conversation. When a fix doesn't hold — when the same problem resurfaces after a founder has already tried to clarify expectations — the cause is often that the founder hasn't addressed the specific person and the specific gap directly. "Anytime a CEO is not willing to have the hard conversations that are needed with her team members," Garvin says, that's where the same issue keeps returning in a new form.
Her response to that avoidance is a three-step structure she calls the sit-down, built to lower a team member's defensiveness enough that the conversation can actually land.
Step one is owning responsibility. The founder opens by naming their own gap first — acknowledging, for instance, that they haven't made time to check in recently. This isn't a courtesy; it changes what the other person is bracing for. Instead of walking in expecting blame, they hear the founder taking accountability for their side of the breakdown, which lowers the instinct to get defensive before the substance of the feedback is even delivered.
Step two is specific feedback. Garvin is precise about what "specific" means: naming the exact pattern — missed deadlines, a downstream effect on clients — without letting it drift into a character judgment. This keeps the conversation about the work, not the person's worth, which is where these conversations tend to derail when founders avoid them and then deliver everything at once.
Step three is the action plan. Not an ultimatum by default — sometimes it is one, but more often it's a direct question: what needs to change, what support is needed, and a specific check-in point. "This needs to change. Let's check back in next week. Are we good?" Garvin says. The structure closes the loop instead of leaving the feedback to hang unresolved, which is often why founders avoid giving it in the first place.
"The sit-down is a framework to use to make these hard conversations easier," Garvin says — not to make them disappear, and not to guarantee a particular outcome. It's a structure for the conversation a founder already knows is overdue.
Garvin's most concrete recommendation is also her simplest: track your own micro-decisions for a single day. Every quick answer to a question a team member could plausibly have made — not always black and white, but plausibly theirs to own — gets a mark. Her estimate, offered as a working guess rather than a researched figure, is that most founders will find at least twenty in a day.
The value isn't the count. It's what the count exposes: a founder who has been unconsciously absorbing decisions has no visibility into how much delegation is actually possible until the volume is on paper. Garvin's recommendation isn't to redirect all twenty at once — it's to find five, hand them back explicitly, and let the team member run with them, with clear enough parameters that the handoff doesn't collapse into the same micromanagement failure described above.
The tradeoff she's naming is uncomfortable but direct: every decision a founder keeps making instead of delegating costs time now and defers the capability-building that would let them step back later. "Every time they ask you, they put the monkey on your back," Garvin says. Declining to take it doesn't mean disengaging — a founder can still coach a team member through a live decision, walk through the reasoning afterward, and hand the next similar decision back a little further. What changes is who owns the outcome, not whether the founder stays involved.
None of this is a guaranteed fix. Garvin is clear that the sit-down and the micro-decision count are starting points, not universal prescriptions — some situations will still require more than a structured conversation and a redirected decision. But the throughline holds: for a founder stuck fielding decisions that no longer need to be theirs, the constraint usually isn't the team's readiness. It's the founder's own unresolved backlog of avoided conversations and undelegated calls.
The corrective isn't a bigger hire or a harder push for more ownership from the team. It's narrower and more immediate: document the expectations currently sitting only in the founder's head, have the specific conversation that's been avoided, and start handing decisions back one at a time — with the parameters that let them stay handed back.
Lia Garvin spent her early career driving team operations on some of big tech's most complex products, including HoloLens at Microsoft, the redesigned iPhone lineup at Apple, and YouTube Shorts at Google, always focused on the interpersonal gaps and misaligned expectations that slowed teams down. Four and a half years ago, she left Google to bring that same diagnostic approach directly to founders and small business owners, typically running teams of three to fifty people. Her perspective is built on pattern recognition across dozens of engagements rather than a single company's story. She now works with founders through a program she calls the Ops Playbook, helping them document the decisions, priorities, and systems needed to step back from day-to-day operations.
Connect with her at liagarvin.com or on LinkedIn.
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Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
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The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
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Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY:
00:00 Founder Delegation Preview
00:22 Meet Lia Garvin
01:10 Big Tech Operations Lessons
03:45 Replacing Yourself as Founder
05:38 Delegating Without Micromanaging
08:27 Building an Ops Playbook
11:26 Creating Teamwide Clarity
14:53 Turning Vision Into Systems
16:54 Prioritizing Profitable Systems
18:50 The Sit-Down Framework
26:14 Offloading Daily Decisions
30:31 Keep the Monkey Off
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Lia Garvin (00:00)
Every time they ask you, they put the monkey on your back. The biggest challenge is is the founder wanting to replace himself anytime a CEO is not willing to have the hard conversation. The sit down is a framework to use it becomes impossible to replace yourself if you're still doing the work that you're paying other people to also be doing.
Jeff Holman (00:22)
Welcome back to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman. And I am here with Leah Garvin today. Leah, welcome to the show. I'm
Lia Garvin (00:29)
Thank you so much for having me on.
Jeff Holman (00:31)
I'm glad to. we were talking before the show just a little bit and and we used an analogy there. I think a lot of times the CEOs are up there in the driver's seat, right? And and you're you're one of the people making sure the engine's working, maybe pressing the gas sometimes. And I've I'm seen, not always not always accurately, but I'm seen as the guy pumping the brakes.
Maybe pushing the emergency break when I can. you know, we we have our roles, right? Yeah,
Lia Garvin (00:56)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (00:57)
that's funny. Well, give us I I'm kinda giving the intro here a little bit, but but why don't you tell us where where this comes from, what what your role is and you know why why you've developed into the into the space that you're in.
Lia Garvin (01:10)
Yeah. So I spent my most of my career driving team operations in big tech. So I worked at Microsoft, at Apple, at Google on some of the most cutting-edge transformative products that folks were working on at that time. I worked on HoloLens, the first augmented reality headset at Apple when they redesigned the phone without the home button and had to redesign every single app that that the phone touched. YouTube Shorts. And within these teams,
in operations, so not on the HR side, actually in the product teams working on you know, how are we gonna get this done? How are we gonna bring this to life? How are we gonna orchestrate all the players in the equation? I got really passionate about the thing that nobody was actually talking about, which was all the interpersonal dynamics, all of the conversations that weren't happening, or the duplication of efforts, or the misunderstood expectations and
started to build a brand for myself internally on the person that could see everything that was going on from the surface and start plugging all the holes that were making work slow down or folks feel frustrated or just kind of everything feel chaotic. but I was doing that within engineering companies and and is a as a non-engineer, always felt like I was a little bit out of place. And so I decided about
Four and half years ago to leave Google and work with companies from the outside in, where I could go in and sit down with a business leader or a founder, a CEO and look at what's going on in their team and diagnose or prescribe basically like laser focused solutions and systems to unblock the things that were sticking. and and so that's what that's what I do now.
Jeff Holman (02:59)
That's
awesome. Ha and you work more with founders now, at least a lot of your messaging is towards founders and smaller companies, right?
Lia Garvin (03:04)
Yeah, so exactly. Now I work with companies whether you have three c probably about three to thirty to fifty employees, so
Jeff Holman (03:11)
What what what is is there some type of I don't know normal insight that you bring to people? 'Cause people who have been in smaller companies that don't have the the Google and the Microsoft and the Apple experience, like the I don't think they think the same, right? They they come at it from a different pro from a different perspective. What's that? Is there some type of I don't know, superpower that you bring to the conversation? You're like, listen, let me let me share some insights from the bigger companies. This is how you do it. Or
Or is there something that stuff or does stuff not carry over as much because of the size difference?
Lia Garvin (03:45)
I I would say first and foremost, it it absolutely does carry over. And I think when I say these companies, it's not to it's actually to reinforce, hey, if I've seen it there and this stuff works in these situations with so many people and so many things to coordinate and so many, then it's definitely gonna work in a smaller business because with the founder, you're you actually can make all the decisions and and remove all the red tape. And I share that because sometimes when I talk about my background, founders think, well.
I'm not a Google, how how would what you're doing help me? And it's because at the end of the day, it is about getting people coordinated, getting everyone to understand how work gets done. And the biggest thing that I see that founders struggle with, and again, my clients typically have about between three to let's say 30 employees, so small businesses. The biggest challenge is the founder wanting to replace himself, not wanting to be in the day-to-day.
But still being responsible for all the decisions. So you're still, you know, and it might be your team comes to you and they want you to make the decision. So you're like, well, I I wouldn't if they didn't, but they're coming to me. But you're reinforcing it over and over. And it becomes impossible to replace yourself if you're still doing the work that you're paying other people to also be doing.
Jeff Holman (05:04)
Totally makes sense. I I think I I'm not gonna tell my own sob stories here because but I probably fall into that in some, you know, I run run a small law firm. I fall into that just this morning. I was I was sending something to a team teammate and I'm like, I hired you for this. This is actually on the podcast side of things, which my podcast team is awesome. Some of them are newer. I'm like, I hired you for this, and I'm I feel like I've got to unlock the vision a little bit more because I've given you some basics, but now that you're getting into the role.
I you know, I've got a broader vision that I wanna share with you, but it does feel like I'm dictating from the top and I don't wanna I don't wanna be doing that.
Lia Garvin (05:38)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean I think the solve for that, just because since you mentioned it, because I think it is the biggest thing that that folks get stuck on, is to say, okay, I have my vision. This is the way I'm seeing it. How can I introduce even more and more context, even more and more subtext, even more and more things that feel intuitive? And sometimes it's having someone shadow you as you walk through it and saying, okay.
I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, show you how I do a consult with a client or write a briefing or, you know, set up the podcast, whatever it is, shadow me. But don't just watch me. I'm gonna narrate every single step and say, Okay, here is what I listen for when I'm talking to someone. did you notice? Maybe you video it and and go back through it like
Jeff Holman (06:30)
I have done that so many times. I've I've started using Zoom clips all the time. Again, this is not about me and my podcast business, but but I've started using Zoom clips and I'll just narrate and tw I'll do 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes, whatever it is, and I'll just be like, hey, the video's there. I do have to I do have to be careful though, because I have to say, hey, I might be s sharing a lot of stuff, but unless I've said it's urgent, it's not like we don't need to create tasks around it, right? It's just it's knowledge and absorb it and and eventually, you know, some of that might come back up.
Lia Garvin (06:59)
Yeah, exactly. And that's not micromanaging. I think there's a really there's a very distinct moment that creates micromanaging. It's it's about the when, not the what. So when you give someone guidance, context, you've you've walked through maybe in a in a Zoom or a Loom video and you're showing them, okay, this is the setup. This is how you know what to do and what a good job looks like. That's the expectation setting.
It becomes micromanaging if either you didn't do any of that and you're like, go run with it, I've you've got it. And then they start and you're like, wait, actually, no, do that or stop over here. I wanted it this way. Right. So that, or you've made this handoff and you're still checking in constantly outside of the parameters that you set. So I think we can we can confuse well, I don't want to be a micromanager, I don't want to be overbearing, and then not set any parameters. And then of course we have a standard.
And people can't read our mind. So then we get really stuck and and unsure of how to interject and and and course correct. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (08:02)
Man, I mean, I'm sure that describes most of the businesses you walk into. You know, what what's a what does a typical engagement look like? like what do you see in the room when you walk in? Are do you normally talk with a f the founder or the CEO or who who do you see and how do they describe the problems? And then my my follow up to that would be, what do you find when you start to dig in past that initial conversation?
Lia Garvin (08:27)
Yeah, I love that. So the the primary way that I support business owners is through a program I call the Ops Playbook. And it is essentially building out your custom playbook that has your priorities, the working norms, who makes decisions for what things, you know, how you measure success, really these foundational ingredients that allow you to replace yourself in the business, sell the business because you have all of that documented, hire new people easily. And so the way that starts is I do a
three hour deep dive with a business owner and talk through all aspects of the business, right? What feels easy or hard? Where do you wish that people just magically did something, right? All of these things that we want to have on the other end and would allow us to step out, but we feel like the team's not quite there yet. So from that conversation, I start to see is the like, is it more that we don't have the right people on the team?
Is it that they aren't maybe empowered enough to take ownership? They don't know what they're supposed to be doing. I can get a real sense on the what the founder perceives to be the issues are as well as what's going on on the team level. usually I think you you're in a situation where you want to let go of more, but you don't have leaders really built up. So you feel like you don't really have a bench, you don't have a number two, you don't have someone that could totally
Take care of something and you don't worry about it at all if you weren't there. So that is a very common problem. and another one, I hate to say it, is that there's like a lot of conversations that needed to happen, feedback that hasn't been given yet, you know, that kind of
Jeff Holman (10:08)
Those those sticky situations when if you don't talk about then you end up calling your attorney and can't tell
Lia Garvin (10:15)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (10:17)
you how many times I'm like, Hey, did you think about having this conversation a month ago? 'Cause you might not I mean I like I like being hired, but I'd rather help you I say this all the time to to find that like I'd I'd rather help you, you know, grow deals rather than res resolve disputes. So
Lia Garvin (10:31)
Exactly. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (10:32)
But Well so so I'll bet I'll bet once you have a you know that that initial sit down meeting with
with the CEO, they feel pretty good. I mean, three hours is a good amount of time for them to sit down, explain things in detail and I'm sure you grasp a lot of that. And it's like, okay, I got this. D do you find that there's a different picture when you start to talk with the team generally? Like like where and I'm asking this not because not because, you know, it's a like a gotcha for CEOs, like, hey, you thought your business was this, but it's not. But but CEOs bring in people like you or me or, you know, other
advisors because we bring a perspective. We're we're able to maybe ask some questions that are tough questions that don't get asked all the time. D is it do you see consistency with what the CEOs say? Or do you do you find that CEOs have certain blind spots? What what what is kind of what does that next step look like?
Lia Garvin (11:26)
So I would say the reason I start with the deep dive with the CEO on first is because I think the first challenge that that they run into is having all these things in their mind of how they want things to be. And they have not put on it or it's it's exactly it's in a million different places. And so in the meeting, that actually gives me the scaffolding to have version one of the playbook. Okay. And so after that deep dive, the playbook is ready.
And it's ready to socialize with the team. So the idea is if you're stuck where like you feel like my I'm not getting my team and and these things are all happening, that's the reason I do that first without all of the other perspectives and and roles, because first we need to make sure everyone knows what that baseline is and what that standard is. So, but then like like you're asking.
I would say more often than not, the alignment the alignment's actually closer than people think it is. And that's what has been a surprising finding, whether it's in the big companies I worked at or with founders, is think we think people don't care or we think they're not good at something, or we think they, you know, they are entitled or they just are asking for more money or whatever. But actually, when you've spelled out the expectations and you've given more context.
Your your team members are like, okay, yeah, I can do that. And that I think's been the biggest surprise is that a lot of the issues are more salvageable than maybe we thought, that we probably don't have to hire that next person. you know, I my work is akin to fractional COO. And I often say, usually you don't need a COO. You you want this big expensive hire, but like you really need a playbook and a and an like an office manager or or a really solid.
executive assistant to deploy, right? Cause it's like, so I think it it really brings clarity into what team structures needed. And it's been it's been a pleasant surprise that more often than not, the team is like, yeah, like all I ever wanted was to know what I need to do to g do a good job. because the the the playbook is not based on it's it's really the simple lightweight systems to have the business run.
And so the team's inputs and thoughts are more around, okay, do I know how to do a good job of this? Do I know how to bring this to life? Do I understand what's being asked of me?
Jeff Holman (13:58)
A lot about clarity then. I mean, it that's really what it is about clarity. Because I think a lot of I think a lot of times CEOs are like, Man, my team, this and that. And you know, they they love their teams, right? But but every CEO is always saying, Why isn't this working? How do I do it better? And and and so it's not always that you've got the wrong person in the seat, right? I I I like that you say that a lot more of it's salvageable fa salvageable than than sometimes we think. what for your playbooks, what do you what's kind of the
You know, what's the secret sauce or the, you know, the the I don't know, the thrust of what you bring with your playbooks for these CEOs? 'Cause 'cause CEOs, they've got this a lot of times mapped out, right? Like they got the five year vision, the ten year plan. I'm gonna sell this company, I'm gonna grow. But but what's the what are you bringing to fill the gaps between, you know, where they are today versus where they're trying to go and all the fuzzy in between?
Lia Garvin (14:53)
Yeah. So like you described, the CEO has the what and the why, right? They have the vision and then they have the strategy. The playbook and what I do is I give them the how. So how are we going to make sure what's in your head or even what you've mapped out and talked about with your team, how do they see, this is how I, my day to day, my job as the customer service person or the person that cleans the office, right? Whoever you are, how do I see what my role is?
in in achieving whatever that goal is. And that is what I map out is okay, we need to have a certain set of meetings, potentially certain sets of communications. We need to know what expectations look like as far as the quality standard of the work. When when do we do work? How do we communicate with each other? How do we know when we're getting a raise or promotion? How do I know that I've done what I need to do or not? So all of these are are systems essentially.
And systems could be as simple as like if you are running a law firm and you have an office, it's the morning routine, right? You come in, you enter the alarm code, you you turn you start the coffee, you respond to the first set of emails, you check the messages, you leave the follow-ups on someone's desk. Like that's actually a system of how do you prepare for the day. And it's super, I think we hear the word systems, we think, I'm talking about corporate bureaucratic.
You know, things that slow you down and it's actually all the things that you wanna have happen again in the same way.
Jeff Holman (16:27)
How do how do you decide which systems to start with, though? Because I hear that and I'm like, I think some people would say, Yeah, I know what you're saying, but let's start with something more, you know, vital, more critical than the than the morning routine. How how do you prioritize those? Or how do you walk a CEO through the conversation where you're saying, hey, listen, you're right. This isn't the most important system, but it's one we need to document at some point. Like, how do you do that?
Lia Garvin (16:54)
It's the places that you're leaking the most money, right? So if you had a let's say you ran a something with a physical location and it was always a mess and people walked in, they're like, I don't wanna come in here, then that morning setup would be the most important. Typically the systems that are needed first are around like how do people know what to do when they finish something. So they're not sitting around and running up the clock, right, with nothing to work on. So the the way we figure out the
the most important systems are where are people wasting the most time, getting things wrong? where where are you as a yeah, causing the bus biggest disruption? Where is the business owner? Are you pulled into making every decision when you shouldn't be? So the morning routine's really the last one. It's more of a, it's more of an example of how simple it could be, but it's where are you leaving the most money on the table with your team? Because all of this is about
you know, getting the maximum ROI out of your team because your team's the most expensive resource. And so this is where it's it's a critical thing to figure out because people bleed money over employees that are are not really finishing work. They say they'll get to it or they, you know, they never do. And so you're like, okay, I'm I'm just gonna do it for now till I figure this out. Every single day of that starts costing you more and more money. And when there's a lot of issues on your team
High performers don't really want to be there. So you're actually risking losing your A players because they're surrounded by a bunch of stuff that could be resolved.
Jeff Holman (18:32)
D is there a is there a situation where you went into a business and you said, we're like this is gonna be easy, we're gonna solve this and you you get into it and you're like, the problem wasn't where I thought it was. Like I I wanted to go t I wanted I talked to the CEO, I wanted to go this direction, and ultimately we uncovered something completely different.
Lia Garvin (18:50)
Yeah. The that happens anytime a CEO is not willing to have the hard conversations that are needed with her team members. And so I think like it's actually not uncommon that that happens because what you uncover in any situation is yes, systems are gonna make things clear, but the other piece of that is following up and giving feedback when someone doesn't follow it.
And the that is the agreement and the other I would say the other side of the work that I do is the the CEO has to say, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna have these conversations. I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to the person that told me 80 million times they were gonna do it and they never did it. And I'm frustrated, but I haven't said anything because I know their family. You know what I mean? Like all of these different things. Right. And and there's a simple framework that that I share with them and I'd love to share, which is
I call it the sit-down. You mentioned you said the word sit-down earlier. And it's approaching a feedback conversation, you know, in in a in a very simple way, three steps. First, owning your own responsibility. So taking responsibility and saying, Hey, you know, hey Jeff, I know I haven't made time to to check in with you for a while, and that's on me. And, you know, I I really want to make sure you know that I support you in this role. Step two, give the specific feedback.
And say, hey, and you know, we've it's been really, really busy and you've missed the last two deadlines and I know you're slammed, but it's caused a ripple effect where it's caused, you know, our clients are starting to get frustrated and they ask to work with a different team member. And I need to make we can't have that happen. Step three, action plan. Say, so let's talk about what we can do. Do you need to partner up with someone on this project? Do we need to go back and load balance other projects so that you have capacity?
is do you need me to reassign some of this work? Right. And so by owning responsibility first, you bring the wall down. So that person is there, they're receptive to listening. Then by giving specific feedback, you know, okay, this is about the work thing. It's not I'm a bad person or you don't like me or whatever. People can spiral around. And then third, having an action plan, it may be, it may have an ultimatum, it may have a timeline associated, but a lot of times it's just, hey.
This needs to change. Let's check back in next week. Are we good? You know, and you make sure that person has that understanding. And the sit down is a framework to use to make these hard conversations easier.
Jeff Holman (21:28)
Sounds like that sounds like that's one of the gaps that you're filling pretty immediately with a lot of people because you know just go in and be like, okay, like tell me about your business. Now tell me about the gaps with conversations you should have had already and you haven't had. Let's start there.
Lia Garvin (21:40)
Yeah, and we can role play and practice it. Exactly. And it's the the feeling like I don't know what to say or I don't want to be in an awkward conversation or I don't want it to turn into sort of thing or a lot of times I I don't want that person to quit. I feel like I'm walking on eggshells. That's why the sit down is so powerful because it it reduces those defenses. It doesn't mean that it won't be hard, it doesn't mean that things won't come up, but
It gets you so much further than just saying like, Hey, you need to do your job better or like why didn't this happen? And someone feels like they're on the defense. So it it's it's the starting point that folks have been looking for.
Jeff Holman (22:25)
What I what I really love as I listen to you talk about this is I get the I get the impression that this is really a a people people part of the business. This is not I mean, ops is not just flow charts and deadlines and project management, you know, Gantt charts or something. This is this is people that we're dealing with and you're making it very, very much about the people.
Lia Garvin (22:44)
Yeah, because it's people that are utilizing these systems that are interacting with your clients and your customers. And I think we can forget that peop HR's not the only people responsible for for the people stuff. And actually I don't have a background in in HR. It's not about compliance. It's not about benefits. It's not about that. It's about how do you equip your people, like you say, to understand how to do a good job. And when they do that, now
you're getting that ROI out of them. When they're not really clear and a lot's in your head or they they it was okay one day and now it's not, like they just they feel like there's no foundation under them and they and they they can't hit the mark.
Jeff Holman (23:27)
You know, I wonder, being having an engineering background myself, having worked with engineers quite a bit, I wonder if your first ten years of working with engineering teams, technical people, was not a a a real training ground to maybe help you learn if you didn't already know how to how to interact with people who aren't always the, you know, at least stereotypically the most interactive people. I I'll bet that was I'll bet you learned a lot of things that how you how you communicate with the engineering team.
that's really carried over into into working with CEOs and everybody else across the board.
Lia Garvin (24:02)
Yeah, that's a great point. And and I think it's within that environment, not being an engineer. I mean, I had so much imposter syndrome around like walking to a room and being like, well, I can't have some technical debate with an engineering director at Microsoft that's been here 20 years. Like I felt like, well, how am I gonna add value? What you know, what am what am I here to do? And I started to listen and observe and ask questions around, well,
You know, you you have all the technical stuff, but there were these gaps, like we said, in in communication, in expectations and priorities. And I think it was in feeling so out of place in a sense for the first few years that I said, Okay, well, I'm not going to try to get a computer science degree in at night school like I thought about the first few years. Like, should I just do that? It was like, wait, I I actually there are some really
Critical things that I'm observing. And when I bring them up, people are like, yeah, nobody else is looking at that, you know? So then I started to see, okay, that there's a real need for this. But it's true. And in really helping folks see the common ground. I worked mostly on the UX side in some of these roles. So on the design side, design, engineering, product, all of them have perceived different goals, but they really have the same goal at the end of the day to to launch the certain product, right? So
I was a bridge between them all. And then having to create, okay, what would you need to see as an engineer to care about what design wants? Well, you seeing your whatever you're working on come to life visually, that's going to get you excited about it. So let's figure out how to do that. Right. So it was really understanding each person's goals and motivations and getting everybody aligned faster to achieving them.
Jeff Holman (25:54)
I feel like we I feel like we might be might be kindred spirits or something. I I often talk about being the translator. You do we need to talk about business? Do we need to talk about law? Do we need to talk about engineering? Like these are very different things. They all should be pointing the same direction. And sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. But but who are we talking to and which which objectives are we working on right now? Do you do you feel like you have to translate a lot?
Lia Garvin (26:14)
Exactly. Well, and that's why I said it's really not that different when when I do dive in with the team. It's translating. Well, why did it feel so different? Why did the team think the the CO didn't understand what they were doing or vice versa? So yeah, it's it's a good amount is translating. Yeah.
Yeah, it would be start by looking at how many micro decisions you make on a daily basis. And I know we touched on this a bit, but the degree to which w it's happening, I think we don't realize because we're just we're in our flow, in our day-to-day. And I would say grab a post-it or, you know, in your phone, wherever, and just put a tick mark every time you make a quick decision or answer a quick question that a team member could have potentially made.
They might need a little guidance and it might, it may not be cut like completely black and white, but like saying theoretically, yeah, that was that was their job. They they could have made that call if I, you know, but I made the call anyway, because I was just like right there. And I want folks to start to see how many decisions that you're making on a daily basis that potentially could be offloaded. Because every single one of those, I'm gonna guess it's at least 20 a day, literally, at least. Every single one of those is time.
For you that you could be using to, you know, as a service provider, do building the business a different way, or not being working on your business, taking a break. And it's an opportunity for your team member to take more ownership, more responsibility, because the more ownership they feel, the more proactive they are. They're not just working through a to-do list, but they're thinking, here's a better way I could solve this problem. So
By understanding and redirecting decisions back to the person that could own those, this is what unlocks like 80% of the time savings that I find for folks. Now, how you set them up to make decisions, how you make sure, like we talked about, you've given the download of, well, how would I think about this and it's made in the right way? Those are where the systems come into play, right? But if you started with one thing and just thinking,
Even awareness, you probably realize like, okay, I really don't have to make the call on that. You could probably take five of those 20 decisions and redirect them right away. So I think folks listening, like, try to find five decisions and and let your team members make them and say, okay, here's things that have to be true about it, or here's how I want you to loop me in, but roll with it. And we can start small, but you're gonna find you really start to free up time. You're gonna get real excited about freeing up more decisions.
Jeff Holman (29:25)
I can I add can I add my perspective onto that? But just because as you're saying this, I'm like I you know, again, I personalize stuff because it's what I know. But I I'm sure a lot of CEOs deal with the same types of things and that my spin on the same thing. You're saying tick marks and how add up how many you have. I think I have my own trigger that I realized and I try to be very, very conscious of it, and that is sometimes people come to me and my gut reaction is
Why do I have to make this decision? Why are you not making this decision? It's it's this little bit of a like, what's going on here? And so, but I've been I've become very aware of that, you know, and I I don't know if I I don't know if I respond well or not sometimes to that, but but I'm like, okay, if I feel that way, that's definitely a tick mark that that maybe, you know, I've already noted or or it I don't know, maybe I don't need to keep track of tick marks so much if I know once a day I'm saying to myself, huh.
Why are they coming to me? Or why why is this now I I don't know, sometimes I'm like, why is this now my problem? You know? Yeah. This is something that you should be able to do. So I don't know if that's the same or not, but feels feels like that
Lia Garvin (30:31)
Exactly. And
yeah, I think that's exactly it's starting to be aware of the wait a second, that moment. So the tick marks lead to the why, right? So it's the same thing. And then asking the question, What do you think? What would you try? And a lot of times your team members like, Well wait, you're asking me. And if they say, I don't know, I don't know what I would try because you know, having come from engineering, probably both of us.
The devil's advocate. Everything I explain, I know there's like 18 devil's advocate arguments. So, like, what if someone is not ready or not able to make the decision? Now what? Answer would be, you know, they go, Well, I don't know. Say, okay, well, talk me through it. What has worked? What's a similar thing you you've decided in the past? Or what worked for someone else? Or go ask your colleague, come back to me with a few ideas. Or you know, just like getting them thinking because the problem you mentioned.
Of why is this my problem now is the thing that keeps you so in the weeds and is why you can't step out of your business. So every time they ask you, they put the monkey on your back, right? Like they said. And so you're like, hi, you're gonna keep that monkey. I'll ask you some questions to things to figure it out, but I am not going to take that on. That is the big shift that creates the change. And you can still coach your team members through it. You can say, okay.
Here's okay, we got to make the call in the next 30 seconds. Okay, here's what I would say, but now you debrief it. Now you say, okay, tell me why did I make that call? You you do you can still, if you have to, make the call, but do some teaching in the process and then you start to do that same process of of transitioning that to them.
Jeff Holman (32:15)
And the final piece of that transition, I would guess, is don't hold on to my monkey, right? If I if I got the monkey on my back, I can't be like, don't come to me with the problem, but also don't take my monkey. Like so.
Lia Garvin (32:25)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (32:28)
Okay. Well, this has been great. Leah, I really appreciate you coming on the coming on the show and and sharing your insights. I mean, what a what a wealth of knowledge working with the teams that you've worked with and and the clients you've had to be able to come and you know help walk people through some of the whys and hows.
in their own business. I really appreciate it. I if somebody wanted to get a hold of you, connect with you, hire you, what how what would be the best way to to connect?
Lia Garvin (32:54)
Yeah, so I would say start with my podcast, Managing Made Simple. I talk about tips, tricks, tools, systems every week with practical things you can do on your team to resolve a lot of these issues. so that's called Managing Made Simple. My website, LeahGarvin.com, is where you can learn more about my work, learn how to work together, see, you know, check out books, other things. And then Instagram is another place, Leah.garvin. I put a lot of bite-sized tips and tools.
There as well too.
Jeff Holman (33:25)
Awesome. And we didn't you mentioned your books. I think you've written several books. We haven't haven't even touched on those yet, but maybe maybe for another time.
Lia Garvin (33:31)
For a part two. and I want to say I have a free resource. LeahGarvin.com slash convo. So my conversation, C-O-N-V-O, is a free guide where I talk about how to use that sit-down framework across five of the stickiest situations that that business owners run into with their team. So definitely check that out. That gives that gets you started on. I don't know what to say, so I'm not gonna have the conversation. LeahGarvan.com slash convo gives you that free resource.
Jeff Holman (33:59)
I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much for for sharing that, the resources, being being so gracious with your time and your and your knowledge and ex expertise. It's been great having you on the show.
Lia Garvin (34:09)
Thank you so much. Yeah. Great h being here.
Jeff Holman (34:11)
Yeah, and for our audience who joined us, thanks again for coming and listening to us on the Breakout CEO podcast. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence.
Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman, and I'll see you next time.
