Ask Savannah
What quietly caps how far a leader can go — and how to see it before it costs you.
If you're still personally solving the problems that made you valuable early on, and your team keeps deferring to you instead of building their own judgment, that's usually the tell. The instinct that got you promoted often needs to be recalibrated, not discarded — same strength, different application at a bigger scope.
Separate "would I have done this differently" from "is this actually good enough" — and only act on the second question. A lot of what feels like maintaining standards is really a preference for your own method, and correcting good work back toward your way teaches people their judgment isn't wanted here.
The discomfort is real, but it's usually about tolerating a different method producing an equally good outcome, not about actually losing anything that matters. What you're trading is direct control over the how; what you keep is accountability for the outcome — which is the only part that was ever really yours to hold.
Because somewhere along the way, routing decisions to you got reinforced — either you made it faster to just ask you, or taking back a delegated call after it wasn't done exactly your way trained people not to bother deciding on their own. The fix starts with noticing which of your own habits are quietly rewarding the routing.
Start by testing what happens when you're genuinely unavailable for a real stretch of time — a week, not an afternoon — and treat whatever breaks as the actual list of things to build capability around. Being needed and being valuable feel identical from the inside; only an absence reliably tells them apart.
Name the real losses directly — for the people leaving and the people staying — rather than leading only with the business logic for why the change was necessary. People aren't resisting the change itself; they're responding to specific losses the change represents, and skipping past those with enthusiasm about the future rarely lands.
Check what happens to decision quality and momentum when you're out for an extended period — smooth continuation signals real capability underneath you, while visible stalling signals dependency that's been mistaken for value. Indispensability feels good day to day and is often a ceiling wearing a compliment.
Demonstrate, repeatedly and visibly, that bringing you bad news or disagreement doesn't cost anything — thank people for it, occasionally change a decision because of it, and never let irritation leak into how you respond to it. A stated open-door policy doesn't change anyone's calculation; only a consistent, observed pattern does.
Value is what you actually contribute to an outcome; being needed is just a measure of how much a system currently depends on you specifically, and the second can rise even as the first falls. A leader who's built real value should become steadily less needed for any single decision, not more.
Communicate uncertainty and difficult news early and directly, rather than waiting until you have a fully polished answer — boards read early candor as strength, not weakness. Trust with a board is built less by never being wrong and more by never being seen to hide something.
Your gut is fastest and most reliable in situations genuinely similar to ones you've navigated before; it's least reliable exactly when something is truly novel, which is precisely when it feels most confident. Build in extra scrutiny specifically when your instinct feels most certain — that's where the expensive misses tend to hide.
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