As (most) parents know, never letting children fail makes them weak and magnifies whatever challenging tendencies they have. You end up with someone who really struggles to take care of themselves and needs help. Always.

The same principle takes place in business, even more so in a new business run by a founder.

Employees are not children, but anyone who works in an organization is influenced by the culture, and founders have a lot of say what that culture becomes.

In order for that culture to support independent and engaged employees, it’s necessary to let your them have enough responsibility and ownership to fail within reason, and then learn. If you don’t do that as a founder, you are teaching them to be dependent on you.

No one is going to do something the way you do it, and that’s okay. The best case is that they will do it a little better, faster, and more productively, that’s when you know you’ve hired correctly.

Letting people own what they are held responsible for is productive and profitable.