- Patience
- Resistance
- The importance of Time
- Discipline
- Planning
- Consistency
- And more.
Micro-Managing is not an effective staff management Strategy
Lost time is never found again
A quick Google search for ‘’Top Things that Waste a Business Owner's Time’’ finds that micro-managing staff is always among the top five on a list.
According to Quickbooks, micro-managing had been listed at number five as well, but personally speaking, for my clients, it often rates higher.
Let’s take a minute to reflect on how we operate and manage our employees within the business.
Have you ever wondered why your team always ask you questions that you think they should have asked someone else – or that they should know the answer to?
Have you ever considered it’s not them it’s you?
That’s right it’s something that you are doing, that encourages them to come to you with every single problem they have.
There are two things that you might be doing that you are subconsciously training your staff to bring every problem to you rather than try and solve it themselves.
- Do you tell your employees off, either explicitly or by your tone when they solve a problem by themselves or if they get it wrong?
If you are doing this, then eventually you are setting restrictions for your employees to obtain leadership in their assigned tasks. As business owners, naturally, we want to overlook everything that is going on in the business, However, micro-managing staff and stopping them from finding solutions can increase inefficiencies, unproductivity and high dependency on you.In my previous article, Hoping is Not a Strategy for Selling I have brushed on the subject of how employees depend on business owners to increase sales. This type of behaviour is encouraged when owners micro-manage their employees.
- Do you solve the problems when your employees bring them to you?Assigning tasks to your employees and solving every problem for them is not an effective or productive way to train your staff. As a business owner, there is so much on your plate, which is why you hire employees to work for you. This reduces the waste of time and increases productivity.
However, if you are hiring employees and continuing to do their job as well, then you must reconsider your employment management skills.
Lessons from Cricket
- The bowler
- The batsman
- The Wicketkeeper and
- The Fielders
Now, let us assume that the bowler is one of your teams bringing you a problem.
The fielders are the other people in or associated with your business, like staff, HR consultants, bookkeepers, managers etc.
When the bowler sends a problem down the pitch to you, you can either choose to be the wicket keeper or the batsman – in many scenarios, most of us default to the wicket keeper.
When we get a problem we control it, understand it and send the problem back with a solution, like a wicket keeper catching the ball, controlling it and then returning it to the bowler.
But, what we need is to become like a batsman, we need to think about how to redirect that ball to someone else, maybe a fielder, who then handles the ball or problem for us.
And in some cases, we just let the ball, or problem sail past us, it just doesn’t need to be dealt with.
So there are two roles that you can adapt to when you are operating your business, you can either be the wicket keeper and control the problem and give a solution. Or you can be the batsman and send the problem to the relevant team member.
In the rare cases when we are uniquely situated to solve the problem we must be the wicket keeper, but every other time we need to be the batsman – pushing problems to the other people in the team that we pay to deal with these issues.
As long as you play as the batsman you are increasing effectiveness within the business, increasing productivity, encouraging team members to take leadership roles and most importantly you will be quickly freeing up time for more important things.
I have seen many business owners in the time who concentrate on performance management systems to keep everything under control while allowing employees to solve problems on their own.
Managing employees and accounts can be tough on you, this is why Field Service Management Software such as the i4T Business Platforms allows business owners to control their business activities and manage their employees with transparency, security and compliance.
i4T Business is a good start for Field Service Business Owners to work with a reliable performance management system. So while concluding this subject on cricket and employee management, Let me ask you this?
Are you going to be a Batsman or Wicket Keeper as default?
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