Dan was less than a year into his CEO role when the cracks started showing.
Expenses out of line. An acquisition quietly failing. A sales team running entirely in reactive mode. The previous CEO — one of Dan’s mentors — had left more undone than anyone realized.
Dan needed to grow.
But first he was going to have to cut. About ten percent of the workforce.
He froze.
In his mind, he was not restructuring a company. He was letting people down. Those families were counting on him.
I have watched a lot of leaders freeze in the exact same place. Because of the weight they believe they are carrying.
Employees. Families. Mortgages. Kids’ tuition. The whole web of human consequence, apparently riding on whatever the leader decides.
It can feel noble.
It can also become paralyzing.
And most of the time, it’s not nearly as true as it feels.
The Story That Looks Like Responsibility
Dan’s story sounded responsible.
“I can’t do this to them.”
Who wants to push back on a CEO trying to protect livelihoods?
But look closely.
Sometimes “I am responsible for my people” is not responsibility. It’s the most respectable reason you have found not to choose.
It lets you stay in place and feel virtuous about it.
In Dan’s case, waiting wasn’t protecting anyone. The expenses kept bleeding. The acquisition kept losing money. The sales team kept not selling.
Every week he delayed, he was choosing.
He wasn’t naming it as a choice. But the decision was already being made. Week by week by week.
Who Is Actually Counting on You?
There are two possibilities.
The first is that someone has genuinely handed you responsibility for their livelihood, their stability, or their future.
If that’s true, it says more about them than it does about you.
They have made you the central character in a life they are meant to be living themselves. You can care about them. You can support them. You can lead them well.
But you’re not responsible for them. They are.
The second possibility is harder.
You may have built — or, in Dan’s case, inherited — a company where too much really does depend on you.
Decisions stall in your inbox. People wait for your approval. Nobody wants to move without your blessing. The whole place has learned to orbit around one person.
If that is happening, it did not happen by accident.
Someone created the pattern.
Which also means you can change it.
What Kind of Company Do You Want?
Be honest.
Do you want people who treat you like the weather — something that happens to them, something they monitor, something they wait out?
Or do you want people who are aligned with what you are building and also clearly running their own lives?
People who know they have options.
People who could leave tomorrow and choose to stay.
People who can make decisions without you.
People who will sometimes do it differently than you would. Better than you would.
Most founders and CEOs say they want the second kind of company.
Many have built — or inherited — the first.
The cuts Dan was avoiding were not just about cost. They were about whether the company he was now responsible for could ever become the second kind.
If They Are All Counting on You, That Dependence Is the Signal
If the business falls apart without you, that’s not proof of your importance.
It means you built something that cannot stand without you.
The healthiest companies I have seen are not founderless. The leader matters. Their taste matters. Their judgment matters. Their standards matter.
But the company does not require their constant presence to function.
The place keeps moving.
People keep deciding.
The leader can leave for thirty days, or even a year, and come back to a business, not a pile of delayed decisions.
The leaders who feel most indispensable are often the most exhausted.
And the most stuck.
Decide From Freedom
When Dan stopped using “those families are counting on me” as the reason he couldn’t move, the decision became his again.
Not the board’s.
Not his investors
Not the imagined version of his employees’ families.
His.
He is making the cuts. Carefully and quickly. He can be honest with the people affected, and clear about why.
Now he can start building the company he actually wants to lead.
You can still care deeply about the people in your company. You probably should.
But caring about people is not the same as carrying them.
When you stop carrying them, two things often happen.
You make the decision you have been delaying.
And the people around you start showing up as adults, owners, and leaders.
Together, you can be stewards of the company, while building the people who can lead that company well beyond where you ever could.