Reclaiming Your Power: Step Away From the (Hero) Cape

Week 4 of POWERful February. A system that saves itself (so you don't have to)

Author

Jen Phillips
February 24, 2026

Hi it's Jen,

I hear a version of ⃔this story every week. ☟

Something broke. A deal blew up, a handoff fell apart, a decision that should have been made two weeks ago lands in their lap - again. And when they pause, I ask the founder sitting on the other side of the screen (or table, if I’m lucky),

“What happened next?”

How they answer, more often than not?

“Well, I fixed it.”

Why? Because they’re good at fixing it. 

Faster than anyone else. And honestly? Partially, they don’t even mind. Because the alternative — waiting for someone else to fix it, explaining the context, living with the outcome — feels like an unacceptable risk.

So they reach for the cape. And save the day. Again.

This is the Week 4 edition of POWERful February. I’ve spent the month writing about reclaiming your power — through ownership, decisions, and priorities.

And this week, we're doing the hardest one.

In today's issue:

Default

Here is the thing about being the hero: it works.

In fact, maybe heroics got you here.
But heroics don’t scale.

What makes it insidious: as you’re building, hero culture doesn't feel like a problem. In fact, it feels like competence.

Every time you jump in and save the day

You're not actually solving a problem. You're hiding one. You're teaching the team that they can rely on you as the permanent shock absorber.

I see this with almost every founder I work with. The heroics started for a good reason.

In the early days, someone had to do it. But in $3M founder-led companies and 9-figure organizations, the rescue habit stops being the feature and becomes (an expensive) bug. They know it, asking themselves, "Why does this process still need me?"

While they keep jumping in and doing it anyway, because the system’s not designed to work without them.

That's the trap.

So it keeps going. And the team’s talent goes untapped while you max all the way out, eroding growth potential along the way.

And I get it. I DID it. 

Not as a founder, but in (too) many roles as an overperforming leader. And then even as an executive. But here's the truth not enough of us are telling: the cape moment isn’t leadership. It's a systems failure in hero’s clothing.

A pattern I’ve seen inside $10M founder-led teams and inside global enterprise portfolios. The revenue number changes. The risk doesn’t.

You're not the problem. You’re covering for one.

And that is exhausting in a way that doesn't show up in your metrics.
Until it does.

Ambition

The real hero move is redesigning so the company doesn’t run on heroics.

It’s a shift that separates founders who scale from founders who stall: the moment they stop asking "how do I fix this?" and start taking the next step to deal with "why does this still require me?"

That question changes everything.

Hiring decisions. Standard processes. Escalation paths. Who owns what (and what "owned" actually means).

Retire the hero habit, and some interesting things happen over time. The company gets more resilient. The team(s) rely less on you to fix every issue, and have ownership for problem-solving and process-adjusting.

Decisions start landing at the right level.

And you get your judgment back - the high-stakes, high-leverage, only-you-can-do-this judgment that's supposed to be your actual job.

Is it all immediately perfect? Not by a long shot.

It’s a process of continuous improvement.

But over time, the team leverages more of their talent. It may feel (very) scary at first, breaking the hero habit. But that shift from ME to WE is the central ingredient in the recipe for growth.

And that is POWERful.

Four weeks ago, you named a DRI. 
Three weeks ago, you killed some zombie decisions.  
Two weeks ago, you prioritized the “rightest” rightest work. 

This week, you’re finding the anti-hero opportunities — the recurring moments where you're jumping in, wondering why you’re still required to get shiznak done — and you’re going to do something about at least one of them.

Because that's the new ambition.
Building success that actually scales.

Help a hero out: share The New Ambition with a founder who's been "saving the day". Sometimes the most heroic thing is naming what's actually happening.

GO | DO

Estimated time: 30 - 45 minutes total, over 5 days | Estimated energy: minimal (time spent reflecting)

This week, The 5 Day Anti-Hero Audit.

Catch Yourself in the Act (Day 1 - 5, ongoing)

For the next five days, every time you jump in to fix, rescue, unblock, or decide something, ask yourself: "Should this still require me?"

Keep a running note (phone, doc, napkin — whatever works for you), adding an entry every time it happens and what the “why" seems to be. You don't need to do anything with the answer. Yet.

By Monday, you'll have a map of exactly where you’re jumping in, cape and all.

Get Feedback

Pick a recurring hero loop from your list and ask someone close to it: "Do you actually need me for this? And if so, why?"

You might learn there is a real dependency — and that's useful. But you might hear, "honestly, no, we just thought you wanted to be in the loop." That's news you can use.

The goal is to discover the anti-hero low hanging fruit.

Do the Math

Look at your list and estimate: if you removed yourself from these loops, how many hours per week would you get back, over time?

That’s the leverage heroics are holding back.

Make Minimum Viable Process Improvement

Pick a loop and define the right next step:

  • Assign a real owner (not "the team" — a specific human) to define the anti-hero process

  • Clarify when you’re needed (and when you’re not)

  • Park it as a named rock for the next quarter with an owner attached

It doesn't have to be solved this week. It has to move. 

One decision. One loop. One key person risk, reduced.

Get In There

📊 Subscribe to The New Ambition for instant access to the complete subscriber vault: healthy leadership tools, templates, and frameworks updated weekly with resources shaped by subscriber feedback.

🎧 Listen: Slow Burn: Burnout and Recovery with Henk Campher (From the The New Ambition Podcast archives) Henk is a brand-builder and CMO who hit the wall and rebuilt differently. His team's engagement jumped 30 points when he stopped operating on heroics. Every other business metric followed. Worth the full listen.

Work with me

If you're wrapping up POWERful February thinking, "I can see the heroics. I know we’ve got zombie decisions, I just don't know who should own them or what’s actually my priority one," that's the kind of soul-crusher problem that will stunt business growth and health.

I help founders build anti-heroic traction. Let’s talk.

I can’t wait to keep building with you in March, you anti-hero, you.