Superhero Complex (Musing)
I think I suffer from Superhero Complex. Maybe it kind of stemmed from the entrepreneur mentality that I developed during those dark years of trying to do everything myself. Somehow I deceived myself into thinking that I can and should do everything on my own from fixing the lights to the designing of posters. It’s not because I don’t value or cherish the value of teamwork or outsourcing, but perhaps the quality of work generated is not what I have in mind and it literally cuts me up big time because often times, I ended up reworking the entire job. But not to knock down Superhero Complex, I find that I can accomplish and complete so much more when I do it myself.
That approach to life is great if you have nothing else better or more important to do. The problem comes when you start getting successful at what it is that you’re doing and your business grows, then what happens after that? More often than not, it is time that you got to consider outsourcing to people who can do it faster or better than you (not to those that cannot do it), that you have to trust and to emplace these people into your management team. You got to start delegating and hoping that they will be able to perform those same tasks that you have been doing. Of course to entirely outsource what it is that you’re doing to one person would be quite mad and foolish. You need to ensure that should that person leave your business would still have the vibrancy to continue and support your customers.
One way is to design and piecemeal that work process so that it can be accomplished by a string of people working for you. That might seem complicated at first but it is far better than loading all that work onto one person. In which case it is no different from you doing the entire job. You want to outsource to different people so that you have the ability to bounce back up should that one resource be not available for you.
I totally understand that it may be quite difficult for some people to outsource entirely what it is that they have been doing on their own. Like I said, a good strategy would be to break up the work processes into different parts and getting different people to help you complete the work, while you perform that role as project manager, finishing up the high level touches or putting the project together.
I think Superhero Complex occurs mainly due to the mechanism of entrepreneurship which in essence is a person who has found a niche and is capitalising on that niche. The unique selling point of that niche in effect caused that Superhero Complex. Because of that uniqueness it is often times a requirement of that entrepreneur to complete and perform all those tasks.