In this latest episode of The 11th Thing podcast, the leadership philosophy series continues with a focus on the power of practical leadership, featuring Barry Cryan, founder of Do More Better and a business growth and systems expert.
Drawing on his work with ambitious business owners, Barry explores why decisions often flow back to the founder as a business grows, and how unclear decision rights or excessive oversight can make the founder a bottleneck. He discusses what teams need in order to take genuine ownership—and how leaders can hold people accountable for results while giving them freedom to decide how to achieve them.
The conversation also examines how founders can respond when a decision goes wrong without diminishing trust, and what practical change can help a business run well without constant founder involvement. Through his Founder Capacity Engineering™ approach and F.A.S.T. OS™ framework, Barry champions a simple idea: a growing business should give its founder more freedom, not less.
