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April 2005 Do Not
Micro-Manage |
Real leadership is rare; micro-management is all too common.
Stop trying to play every darn instrument yourself and start
conducting the orchestra. If you don’t conduct, who will?
Time for a fast refresher. As a strategic business owner,
your primary aim should be to develop a self-managing and
systems-oriented business that still runs consistently,
predictably, smoothly, and profitably while you are not
there. You should shape and own the business system and
employ competent and caring employees to operate the system.
You should document the work of your business so that you
can effectively train others to execute the work. You must
make yourself replaceable in the technical trenches of your
business. To repeat, define and document the specific work
to be done and then train and delegate. Don’t suffocate the
talents and growth of your employees.
Don’t be a super-worker, be a supervisor! Stop the “I’ll do
it myself” and “No one does it as well as I do” attitudes.
Learn to delegate. Engage your coach to help you with this
critical skill.
If someone else can do something 80-90% as well as you, give
it up! Do not spend a dollar’s worth of time on a dime task.
Know your areas of brilliance and delegate most everything
else. Do those things that only you can do as CEO and
delegate the rest. You need to free up time to do CEO
activities that make the vision a reality. However, be sure
to delegate, not abdicate or dump. Stay in touch with the
person and their progress.
To help with delegation, you must have the work to be done
well defined. You cannot delegate non-specifics. Next, you
must adopt the attitude that your time is valuable and learn
to discriminate between various activities. Before doing a
task, ask, “Does this task lead directly to increased
profits, significantly reduced costs, improved customer
satisfaction, or to me building a better business”? If it
doesn’t, dismiss the task or delegate it. Or ask, “Is this
task worth $200 per hour?” If not, find someone else
internally or externally to do this task at a cheaper rate.
You must realize that your CEO thoughts and actions
(building systems, leading, planning, holding people
accountable, coaching other leaders, etc.) are worth at
least $200 per hour. If not, you will never learn to be
effective at delegation.
By all means, get out of the way of your managers and
workers. Don’t meddle. Instead of doing their jobs, help
them to clarify their roles, responsibilities, goals, and
tasks and then simply hold them accountable for getting
things done. Be sure to monitor your employees’ performance,
don’t try to control them. Coach more and play less in the
game.
Once they demonstrate competency and character, give your
employees the authority to make things happen. Let them do
their jobs. Let them tackle stuff on their own and come to
you only when they need further guidance. Instead of
micro-managing the process, manage by results. If you set up
your systems correctly and train properly, you will be able
to manage by numbers and on an exception-only basis.
I imagine and hope that you are paying your employees and
managers good money to do their jobs. If so, get out of
their way and let them perform. If you aren’t paying
adequate wages, beware! If you pay peanuts, then expect to
attract monkeys.
Leadership is less about doing, more about thinking,
planning, and overseeing what others do. You are to create
jobs, not work a job.
Interested in transforming your mindset and behavior? Or
just need help focusing on the suggestions in this article?
We know it’s difficult to avoid micro-management. Delegating
can be tough for everyone, and that’s why highly successful
people have given themselves the gift of good coaching. It’s
helpful, it keeps you on track, it works. Give us a call at
(818) 716-8826 or
e-mail us today.
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