How A Bloody Mary And A Hot Tub Helped Me Finally Learn To Delegate And Grow My Company
For me the word, “Micromanager” always brings to mind the iconic role of Gary Cole as Bill Lumbergh in Office Space.
You remember?
“Uhhh….we have sort of a problem here….Yeah…You apparently didn’t put one of the new cover sheets on your TPS report….Did you not get the memo?”
Watching this movie during my graduating year from high school, I shuddered at the thought of even working in an office, let alone reporting to a pedantic cover sheet cop.
Fast forward 20 years later and the unfathomable happened.
I…became…Lumbergh!
My 18-year-old beach bum self would be ashamed to know that I would one day fall victim to the micromanagement practices of the evil Bill Lumbergh!
It didn’t all happen at once. I mean you don’t wake up one day and say, “I wonder if I could annoy everyone I work and live with by forcing my idiosyncratic processes on everyone.”
Sadly, the decay into micromanagement is subtle enough that you don’t even notice.
Most micromanagement tendencies start from a semi-noble place where there is a passion for both quality and efficiency. However, anyone who has worked with a micromanager knows the frustration of being handcuffed to a process that may not achieve the best results for the individual tasked with the execution.
It is also bad for the managers as it hinders company growth. True delegation allows managers to focus on growth activity and not be bogged down by minutiae.
So if I knew all this, how did I get to the place where I was asking a colleague to take on a task and then impatiently sending a series of Slack messages to them about the status, only to finally do it myself before they could complete the assignment?
I simply forgot the three principles below.
If you have ever been like me, then I beg you to keep reading.
Principle 1: Focus on the positive
When I say, “Focus on the positive” I don’t mean “Look on the bright side.” I mean follow this pattern:
Delegate.
Find a new action to do that replaces the time you just freed up through delegation.
Do the new thing.
If you delegate something you create a void in your calendar or to-do list. This is an opening for something else.
Micromanagers, however, backslide into worrying about the thing they delegated instead of and also partly because they never throw themselves into the new opportunity.
The problem I had when I became Lumbergh, is I didn’t find anything better to do.
Until I finally took a vacation.
It had been 9 months since I started Kasvaa and I was taking my first day off with a little weekend trip with my family and nieces. On the first morning of vacation, I sent a text message to the team to check on some stuff.
“Dude, we got this. Enjoy your day off” was their merciful reply.
With that I threw my phone to the side of the pool, leaving only two items within reach: my bloody mary (breakfast of champions!) and my paperback of Billy Collins poetry. Cocktail and poetry in hand, the 104-degree water in the hot tub, and the vague sounds of my kids having fun is pretty much as good as it gets for me.
All it took was a couple of drinks to set me adrift from the clients and work I love. You would think I am a natural delegator!
Okay, I am not here to promote debauchery. I am simply pointing out that in this situation, I had found a positive set of actions to fill the void left through delegation. I threw myself into my book of poems and let the rest fade away for a day.
I was in “vacation mode” and the delegation worked!
When I am in “work mode” my sole focus should be the growth of Kasvaa and it’s clients
Yet still, I often get sucked into details that don’t advance those goals.
Why?
The answer is that when I am working, I often go too fast.
Principle 2: Slow down.
When I am floating in a pool somewhere my mind is expansive. I see the value in what I am doing and I deeply appreciate the work of others in my company who carry the burden so I can relax for a bit. I can step away from Slack and email and catch up on a day of work chatter in mere minutes. It’s almost like I am operating on a different time scale; as if 8 hours could be compressed into 20 minutes.
But when I am in work mode, I am constantly in what Cal Newport calls the “hyperactive hive mind,” reacting to stimuli and impulses as they come at me. I am filling those 8 hours with constant activity (that’s what work is, right?) and I never slow down to enter the expansive state that is available to me just as if I was floating in a pool in the desert.
As managers, we need to step out of the moment-to-moment scrum. This means that you have to operate on a different time-scale; you have to be slow enough to ask “What matters?” Once you do, you can move away from frenetic activity and focus on doing less actions that are more important at driving the business forward for growth.
The hardest thing to realize is that your company or group can do more if you do less.
This is a bitter pill because you worked so hard to get where you are by doing stuff. Now you have to let go?
This brings us to the Zen portion of the article.
Principle 3: Annihilate the ego.
I hope you are sitting down.
You just aren’t that important.
I know your mom told you otherwise and you worked so hard for those gold stars on the chart, but really you aren’t. Sorry!
This lesson never seems to come easy for me.
I typically act like the stock market would crash if I were to meet an untimely death. Of course, the truth is that the world will go right on without me.
Micromanagers simply can’t envision a world where things get done without them. They are convinced that there is a right way to do things and that, critically, they alone know it!
Hokum.
Your team probably would do just fine, if not better, without you.
Your job is to direct the plan and, mostly, stay out of the way while they get it done in the best way possible.
Summary:
If you are at all like me, laying down your ego is easier said than done. Professional therapy or an executive coach could be helpful here!
Yet, I think you can begin to put these three moves together for improved results.
Ask others to do something and then focus your time on something else you couldn’t have done without freeing that time up. Then really stay away. Even if you can’t take a vacation when you delegate, try to stay away from the activity and let the team come to you with questions (assuming you set reasonable timelines that they can meet). Finally, remember that this can get done without you, and your centrality in the narrative is not expedient.
Step aside, Lumbergh! The growth of your firm depends on it.
Stephen
P.s. Please reach out to chat if your company needs a growth turbo charge or schedule a time to chat here.
