This month Eleanor started school for the first time.
For two and a half years, I could hear her downstairs. A door closing, a toy dropping, "Mama" from the bottom of the stairs. This week, for the first time, I couldn't.
It has been a bigger adjustment than I expected. Not because anything is wrong. Because the whole point of the last two and a half years was working myself toward this exact moment, and it still catches you off guard when it actually arrives.
It made me realize something. The job of a CEO and the job of a mom are the same job.
Your job is not to be needed. Your job is to build something, a company or a kid, that thrives with less and less of you every year. You start out doing everything. You end doing almost nothing on purpose, because you did the first part right.
Most leaders measure themselves by how essential they are. I think that is backwards. The real measure is how well things run when you are not the one running them.
Eleanor did not need me in her classroom this week. That is not a loss. That is the whole plan working.
What is something you built well enough that it stopped needing you, and did it feel like a win or a loss when it happened?
