Most practice owners know the feeling.
A staff member brings you a problem. You make the decision. Another problem shows up. You solve that one too.
And before long, you become the person every issue, decision, and bottleneck has to pass through.
Then comes the question:
Why doesn’t my team care as much as I do?
In this week’s Power Hour, host Eugene Shatsman sits down with Jamie Ramsden, CEO & Founder of Adastra Leadership and author of Let’s Go: How Great Leaders Shape the Future, to challenge the way practice owners think about that problem.
Jamie spent a decade as a CEO and helped transform one of the worst-performing suppliers in the automotive industry into an award-winning organization that ranked among the top suppliers to major OEM customers for years. Today, he coaches senior executives and leaders across multi-million and billion-dollar organizations.
His central argument is simple:
If you want people to act more like owners, you have to lead them in a way that gives them the opportunity to.
Managing a Practice Is Not the Same as Leading One
Payroll. Scheduling. Hiring. Policies. Processes. Technology. Compliance.
All of those things matter, but Jamie makes an important distinction:
Management is largely about systems and processes. Leadership is about people. His definition of leadership is, “Galvanizing a group of people to build a better tomorrow.”
That means leadership is understanding what motivates your people, what gets in their way, how they work together, and how to create an environment where they can contribute more than just the minimum required to complete the job.
If the owner simply manages everyone transactionally, they should not be surprised when employees respond transactionally.
“Why Don’t My People Care as Much as I Do?”
Jamie has heard versions of that question throughout his career.
His response?
Before asking employees to care more about the business, leaders may need to ask themselves if they have shown them that they care about their ability to succeed inside it.
When Jamie began turning around his manufacturing organization, one of his first moves was not another policy or performance target.
He went to the people doing the work and asked what was making their job harder? What systems were getting in their way? What tools would allow them to perform better? Where were the frustrations?
He argues that if employees feel the systems around them prevent them from doing their best work, and leaders repeatedly ignore those frustrations, it becomes difficult to expect genuine ownership in return.
The goal is not just getting their hands. It is getting their heads and hearts, too.
Stop Becoming the Answer to Every Problem
Here is where the conversation becomes very practical.
When an employee walks into your office and says “we have a problem, ” the easiest response is often, “give me the facts and I’ll tell you what to do.”
It solves the problem quickly, but it also teaches the team something:
The owner is where decisions happen.
Jamie calls this a hub-and-spoke system. Every important decision eventually flows back to the leader, and the more the leader solves, the more dependent the organization becomes on them.
Instead, Jamie recommends using those moments as opportunities to develop decision-makers.
Ask if the problem is actually a problem. What data supports it? Is it recurring? What options do you see? What happens if we do nothing?
Those questions may take a few extra minutes today, but they begin teaching employees how to think through problems tomorrow.
From Problem Bringer to Problem Solver
One practical framework discussed in the episode is the 1-3-1 approach:
One problem.
Three possible solutions.
One recommendation.
The point is not to tell employees to never bring you a problem without a solution.
Jamie actually dislikes that mentality when taken too far.
If the employee could fully solve everything themselves, they might not need the leader in the first place.
The purpose is instead to teach them to do the thinking before handing responsibility upward.
What is the real problem? What evidence supports it? What could we do? Which option do you believe is best?
Then the leader can help ring-fence the risk, setting boundaries around time, money, or downside, and allow the team to test the solution.
Over time, Jamie describes the goal as employees “earning the right to be left alone.”
That is how autonomy gets built. By coaching them until they no longer need you for every decision.
The Four Dimensions of Leadership
Jamie also walks Eugene through the leadership model he developed after studying leadership across history.
His framework identifies four dimensions:
Role Model | Do your actions consistently match what you say matters?
Community Builder | Have you created a sense of belonging, identity, and collaboration across the team?
Sense Maker | Can you help your people understand what is happening, what matters, and how to interpret uncertainty?
Future Shaper | Can you help the organization move beyond today’s problems and toward a meaningful future?
Jamie argues that these dimensions reflect what people have consistently expected from leaders across time, not simply the personality traits of a charismatic executive.
And that changes the leadership question from:
“Do I have the right personality to lead?” to, “Which leadership role does my team need from me right now?”
Are You Creating the Conditions for People to Succeed?
Jamie applies the same philosophy to hiring.
Even a strong résumé cannot tell you exactly how someone will operate inside your practice, and one of the most common regrets he hears from experienced leaders is that they kept the wrong person too long, hoping the situation would somehow fix itself.
But the lesson is not simply “fire faster.”
It is also:
How well did you onboard them? Did you clearly define what success looks like? Did you coach them? Did you create opportunities for feedback? Did you build natural checkpoints where both sides could decide whether the fit was working?
Hiring is not a one-time decision. It is a leadership process.
What Should You Do Tomorrow Morning?
Jamie ends with two questions practice owners can begin asking immediately.
How well is my team actually functioning without me?
Do they understand the goal? Do they know how to work together? Do they have enough authority to make decisions? Are your systems helping them succeed, or forcing everything back through you?
If I stopped solving every problem, what could I finally spend my time leading?
Jamie argues that once the team can handle more of the day-to-day, the leader earns the capacity to look forward. To anticipate. To identify threats and opportunities. To shape where the practice is going instead of simply responding to whatever happened today.
The goal is not to become the smartest problem solver in your practice, to make every decision faster, or even to get better at managing everybody around you.
It is to develop people who can think, decide, solve, and care without needing you in the middle of every interaction.
The real measure of leadership may be what happens when you are no longer the person everyone has to turn to.
Key Takeaways
Management and Leadership Are Different Jobs | Learn why processes create consistency, but people create the extra effort, judgment, and experience that can differentiate a practice.
Why Your Team May Not “Care Like an Owner” | Understand why ownership is difficult to demand when employees do not have the autonomy, tools, or environment to exercise it.
Stop Solving Every Problem Yourself | See how repeatedly making the decisions for your team can unintentionally train them to depend on you.
Use Problems as Leadership Opportunities | Learn practical questions that can move employees from simply reporting issues to thinking through evidence, options, and recommendations.
The Four Dimensions of Leadership | Explore Jamie’s framework of Role Model, Community Builder, Sense Maker, and Future Shaper, and what each role means inside a practice.
Close the Gap Between Intent and Impact | Discover why the way you think you are leading may not be the way your team experiences your leadership.
Build a Practice That Can Operate Without You | Learn why the ultimate goal of leadership is not becoming better at managing every detail, it is building a team capable of owning more of the outcome.
Connect with Jamie Ramsden
Jamie Ramsden is an award-winning CEO, coach and author with 25 years of international business experience. As an elite coach for the past two decades, he has worked with hundreds of Fortune 500 C-suite clients (including ConocoPhillips, Champion, Hermès, Porsche Finance, StitchFix, UnitedHealth Group & Valvoline), business owners, and entrepreneurs across the globe. His inspirational approach to leadership is shaped by practical business knowledge, deep insights into human motivations, and his proprietary leadership framework, the Adastra Leadership Model. His book Let’s Go!: How Great Leaders Shape the Future (Harriman House/Pan Macmillan, 2024), encapsulates his experience and insights into an effective leadership guide. Jamie holds an MBA with a specialization in leadership and change management from Lancaster University (UK) and trained as a leadership coach in 2004 at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL).
Website: https://www.adastraleadership.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adastraleadership/
Let's Go! How Great Leaders Shape the Future
Connect with Eugene Shatsman
Eugene Shatsman is Host of Power Hour, Managing Partner of National Strategic Group, and Co-Creator of The Eyecare BOSS. A growth strategist and consultant to hundreds of optometric practices nationwide, Eugene specializes in scaling independent eye care businesses through structured strategy, marketing science, and operational clarity.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugeneshatsman/
Website: https://eyecareboss.com/