Chris the Taxi Driver’s Pearl No. 2 – Avoid micro-managing

Continuing on my journey along the quiet, early morning Sydney streets with Chris the Taxi Driver I asked,

‘Chris, how did you avoid micro-managing? It’s a common problem I see in many companies. The managers who do it usually have the best of intentions but somehow don’t know how to let go.’

 ‘I asked lots of questions,’ he answered. ‘When I first started in my role as Chief Engineer I used to have a steady stream of people coming to me with all manner of queries. My line managers were highly competent people, all either my age or older (I was 37 when appointed to the job). But – they’d been ‘trained’ by their previous boss not to trust their own judgement.

 ‘When they came with questions I’d always ask, ‘what do you think is the best solution?’ Most times they really knew the answers. Only occasionally would we need a further discussion.

 ‘Within a very short time I had dramatically reduced the volume of ‘just checking’ queries. People rebuilt confidence in their own decisions.

 ‘The key was that I left the monkeys where they belonged – on their shoulders, not mine! I wanted them to take ownership of, and responsibility for, their own solutions. To do that I had to wean them off relying on someone else. Instead, they re-learnt to trust their own judgement.’

 For more on this issue of ‘monkeys’ and how to avoid micro-management you’ll enjoy Ken Blanchard and William Oncken’s ‘The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey’.  http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Manager-Meets-Monkey/dp/0688103804 I couldn’t help reflecting that Chris the Taxi Driver could have been the role model for the wise old mentor in the One Minute Manager books!

Yours in seeking pearls of wisdom!