A recent conversation on culture and leadership left me reflecting on some of the lessons of my entrepreneurial journey over the last 18 years. My mind went to a post I wrote almost exactly 11 years ago, sharing one of my most profound lessons which had occurred a few years earlier. Some lessons are worth revisiting.

Something was wrong. Over the previous weeks, the pressure in my chest had been building. No, it wasn’t the fuse on a heart-attack. As a business owner, it was a feeling I recognized. It was that knot of stress that comes with very challenging times. It had morphed from the positive pressure of being pushed to rise to an occasion to the nagging heart-burn of feeling overwhelmed. It was turning into something unhealthy, and I knew it.

A wave of orders coupled with some personnel changes and a few administrative barriers had conspired to put our operation behind. As customer calls started coming in to me, I knew we had a problem. I sprang into action. Periodic updates became multiple meetings throughout each day. Summary reports became deep dives into all the details. From purchasing to production and on through shipping and communication I jumped in with a high sense of urgency. Things started to move but not all of them in the right direction.

During the first and second weeks, my efforts were productive. Into the third week, I started to see signs of fatigue in my team. Not physical fatigue. The emotional and spiritual fatigue of the “death march”. The forced march to some goal that doesn’t seem to be getting any closer while someone is standing behind you asking “are we there yet?” You know of what I speak. By the third week, my incessant questions, presence and interruptions were weighing heavily on everyone around me. By the end of the first month, I felt the knot in my chest tightening as I recognized the destructive effects my sustained “motivational” efforts were having on the entire operation – including myself.

There are moments in business that require us to escalate our efforts. Times when we have to rise to the occasion and sprint to the finish line. There are also times when we’ve got to make adjustments to accommodate changes in the environment around us. As driven leaders, our inclination is often towards making things happen through force of will. In my case, this worked briefly from a throughput perspective. My rally lifted production to an impressive level: within a month, we were up 100%+ culminating in a final weekly number that was almost ten times the previous month’s! However…..the wheels were falling off.

The wake-up call came on a Friday. Running between offsite meetings, I reappeared in the afternoon for another of what had become daily interrogations of my management team. The knot in my chest had tightened to a point where I thought I might literally be heading towards a heart problem. I could read the look on the faces of everyone in the office; my very presence created stress at every level. The meeting turned from a status check to a heated exchange and I realized I had pushed my team over the edge.

A while back, someone asked me if I “believed what I wrote and followed my own advice.” I carry that question in my mind and revisit it frequently. As I retreated from that heated meeting, I found myself thinking back through my blog posts wondering if I had any wisdom for myself in this situation. Not only had my team reached the breaking point, I had reached the breaking point. I can count on one hand the number of times that uneasiness in my gut has escalated to a knot in my chest and it is not a place I care to be. I took a breath and thought of basketball.

Basketball? Yes. As a player, coach and a spectator, I’ve spent a lifetime around the game. Much of my philosophy of leadership comes from this sport. Its finite scope and simplicity provides a wonderful window to fully see the impact of many behaviors. When things get tough, ineffective coaches almost always try to micromanage their players. As momentum shifts against them, they hold tighter and it only fuels the slide. Players begin to tense up and over-think decisions. The worse things get, the tighter the coaches squeeze. And so on.

As I considered my options, I realized that there was little else I could do to effect near-term change. My die had been cast. My team was in place and I realized that they were in the best position to manage the challenges we were facing. I decided to let go. Not give up. Let go. Not quit. Let go. Almost immediately, the knot in my chest unraveled. I had been trying to control something by gripping more tightly and the correct answer was the exact opposite. I called my managers into the office, acknowledged their efforts and dedication, admitted my mistake, asked them if they felt they had things under control, and then walked away.

Running a business or leading any venture is a very messy, organic enterprise. In the process, we maintain a unique intimacy with the world around us and it can be difficult to separate ourselves from our perception of that conversation. The most complex elements involve people and the level of our success is dictated in almost every way by how we relate to those people and they to us. As leaders, we must continually reassess how we push, pull or guide those around us based on what the situation demands. Sometimes we have to walk in the opposite direction of our instinctive drive to control.

For me, letting go meant relinquishing day-to-day ownership of deliverables and allowing my team to do what I hired them to do. I didn’t shirk my responsibility; I recognized my limitations and repositioned my role in the process. My team was closer to the situation and more able to do what needed to be done. By jumping-in, I had created another wave of disruption that was perhaps more overwhelming than the first. By letting go and validating their roles and responsibilities, I freed them to be more effective. I affirmed their capabilities and gave them permission to succeed.

In his book Super Habits, Andrew Abela tells the story of a submarine captain whose command and control style led to a fatal accident involving a smaller ship. The U.S. Navy investigation into the incident concluded that the collision was a “series and combination of individual negligences” including the commander’s “disregard of standard submarine operating procedures and his own Standing Orders” as well as members of the ship’s crew failing “to work together and pass information to each other.” Abela references this story in a chapter discussing the super habit of forgiveness. Why forgiveness? Part of the assessment of the commander’s failing was that he had created an environment in which his crew was afraid to speak up, a culture that led to the fatal incident. The author attributes this to a commander who was unforgiving toward subordinates who questioned orders or gave undesired feedback.

As I read this story, I thought back to my 2015 blog post and some of my brushes with command and control inclinations as a coach and as a leader. Abela writes that Jim Collin’s described this leadership pattern as the “genius with a thousand helpers” approach. He writes: “When leaders have high opinions of their own abilities, they have a clear picture in their minds of what the right order of things is, and they expect their subordinates to follow their direction and keep to that picture. Penalties for subordinates who deviate from the picture can be high…”

When seas are smooth, the leader’s job is navigation and preparation. Making sure the team knows where it is going and how it will get there is critical. It is equally as critical to ensure that the team is staffed adequately and prepared fully to achieve the mission. When the seas get rough, the leader’s priority shifts to order and clarity. Back to the basketball analogy, the team is assembled, prepared in practices, and given a game plan for each contest. Once they take the floor, the coach’s job shifts to helping them stay calm, reminding them of the game plan, ensuring the right people are on the floor at the right time, and encouraging them through all the difficulties.

In 2026, my mind and heart are focused on the notion of human flourishing as it relates to my company and my leadership. I’ve become convinced that my responsibility as a leader centers on fostering it as much as I possibly can. Though there are numerous facets to human flourishing, a key part of flourishing in any role is having the agency, the ability to make decisions and act independently, to fulfill one’s mission. As a player on the court, agency means having the freedom to act fully with all of one’s skills and flourishing would encompass that agency without fear of reprisal at every mistake.

In the story from my 2015 post, human flourishing was the farthest thing from my mind and I’m not sure I had ever heard of the word “agency” as it relates to individual accountability. The situation was dire and my initial answer was to grip it and try to will it to the conclusion I wanted. My practical lesson was that I needed to let go and let the team do what they were already equipped to do. However, I see it now as a great example of the necessity of individual agency and how it contributes to the flourishing of that individual and the organization.

In many ways, these stories get to the heart of the function of leadership and the struggle to balance control with individual agency. As leaders, we must maintain a necessary tension between what and how we see something needing to happen, and the freedom, the individual agency, necessary for those on our teams to achieve their mission and ultimately to flourish in their roles. Too much either way and we get disorder, chaos, and disillusionment.

In the case of the submarine captain above, he failed to foster agency for his team and resisted ideas other than his own. This was a failure of preparation and created a culture of the “genius with a thousand helpers.” In the case of my own example, my efforts to control were equivalent to jumping on the floor as my players were playing the game, causing further stress and chaos, while undermining their ability to do what they were equipped to do. In both cases, removal of agency impeded flourishing at the individual and the organizational level.

Some lessons are worth revisiting.