A gentleman named Wilber Margol used to say that to move forward you have to replace yourself. In other words, develop someone to take over your work so that you can move forward to other things. This seems simple at first. I don’t believe that anyone would disagree with his wisdom.

Carrying this out, though, is a different story. Whether it is pride, or fear, or both I don’t know. There is typically a reluctance to turn work over to someone else who may do things differently or better than you. The result is that you never really replace yourself and you fail to move on.

I have always wanted to surround myself with people smarter than me. The way to further my career is to have a staff that makes me look good. This is not about taking credit, because that will blow up in your face. Instead it is about giving credit for a job well done, which demonstrates leadership.

I want to share two stories with you. I led an engineering team designing a small power station on a military base. In one of our status meetings, a high ranking member of the “Brass” was in attendance. The Captain who oversaw the contract work taking place on the base began the meeting by discussing all of the active projects. Nearly every sentence began with “I”.

The Brass interrupted the Captain after about 5 minutes by saying “Mr! Your are one busy SOB”. He promptly walked out. He told me later that he was disgusted with the Captain’s failure to recognize the efforts of others.  I wonder how the Captain’s career progressed from there?

Second story. Recently, I found myself in need of a firmware engineer. I made it a point to hire someone who was significantly more knowledgable than me (relatively easy to do). I am not interested in be the “emperor in his new clothes”. The result was a new employee who immediately found a better approach our our development problems. I gave him free reign and he help us accomplish an important milestone in our project.

I gave him the credit and was rewarded with a pay raise. Zig Ziglar would be proud of me.  I wonder how my career will progress from here?

The moral of the story, and my personal philosophy, is this. Immediately, begin the process of replacing yourself with the smartest people you can find. It will take courage and confidence, but in the end, the reward is worth it.