How do you know if you’ve hired the wrong people? You need to micromanage their every move.
How do you know if you’re just a micromanager independent of the people? You micromanage every person, initiative, and task within your grasp regardless of competence – yours or theirs.
This might not come as a surprise, but no one likes to be micromanaged. Especially people who like to think and do. These thinkers and doers are particularly offended by such scrutiny and limitations on their ability to do their jobs effectively.
If the leader truly plans to manage every detail in the organization, then he/she needs to be hiring “yes” people – you know, the ones who don’t like to think. They just trade hours for a paycheck and can meet the minimum expectations of the job. And can tolerate being told what to do and how to do it.
If the leader doesn’t want to have do deal with this level of detail, then it’s best to hire independent thinkers – those who like to do the research for the best ideas and then put them into practice.*
*This one comes with a big warning. If you hire independent thinkers and enthusiastic doers and then prevent them from taking initiative, you’re running the very immediate risk of them leaving.
We can’t be experts in everything
Unless you’ve got a one-person company, you’re hiring these additional people to help think and do. And you ought to be hiring competent people whom you can trust to do their jobs exceptionally well. They should bring expertise that is complementary to currently existing skills and knowledge in the company.
And they should be looked upon with great enthusiasm for the fresh perspective they bring and their willingness to jump in and do these new jobs with their fiery passion.
Business owners have a lot of things to think about on a daily basis, and being an expert in one or more disciplines within the company will have to depend on the size of the organization. If you are a one or two person company, you’d better do your homework quickly and get up to speed in some unfamiliar territory – for producer-owners maybe it’s marketing and client service.
Why we hire a team of people
If you’ve got a larger organization, then the owner doesn’t need to be that expert in all those areas. That’s what the team is for.
When you hire people to manage specific areas, you should be looking to them for advice because they are the content-area experts and can help achieve company goals bigger, better, faster. If you’re not getting that expert–level advice and instead finding yourself micromanaging them and their activities, then you need to go back and do the micromanagement test.
While it’s always the leader’s responsibility to set the vision and ensure the company stays on target, he/she needs to let the team determine the best path for getting there. If the leader doesn’t trust and rely on team members to help grow an incredible company that everyone is excited about working for, then it’s time to do some re-evaluation and reflection about the bigger personal and business goals the leader is striving to achieve.
Photo by The Richardson Fosters.
