Admit Your Control Freak Tendencies

Brad Farris, one of our speakers at the recent Mind Your Own Business conference, made an interesting point in his presentation: your management style—the things you hold onto, even though you whine about having to do them—are “doing” something for you. They feed something in your ego or your standing, or maybe they keep you in a place where you feel competent (creative, coding, client management, whatever) so that you don’t have to “fail” in a new business setting, or some other place where the business really needs you.

Without even knowing most of the tens of thousands of people who read this weekly screed, I’m fairly confident that you are skilled and confident and a remarkable entrepreneur…or you wouldn’t have accomplished what you have, against so many odds.

Where You Concentrate is Key

But where you choose to apply your formidable talents is going to have a direct connection to how your firm does. I’m going to try and illustrate that in a minute, but here’s the philosophical overlap that will apply to every single firm, without exception, that has roughly a dozen or more people:

1. You shouldn’t have much of anything to do with project management. If a client asks you the status of a particular project, you should never have the answer without consulting someone else first.
2. You shouldn’t be the primary contact person for any client. Yes, there’s a dotted line between you and key people on the client side, but the direct line is between some capable account manager on your team and the daily decision maker over there. (No, dev shops are not an exception to this.)

If you step through those two gates, it frees you up to do these things, in order:

1. Oversee the financial and operational performance of the firm. Set the standards, make sure specific people are working on them, and enforce the appropriate performance. Of these two, the financial is more important than the operational.
2. Make certain that the new business problem is solved.
3. Hire and manage the performance of the handful of people who head up specific departments.
4. Strategy for clients. You aren’t likely to have time for this, but this is what you’d do if you do have time. And of course having multiple partners means that you can divide and conquer.

“I Keep Getting Sucked In”

So you’re reading this, but you look inside yourself and you see good intentions. You want to work on the bigger picture, but you keep getting pulled back into the little picture. What’s a principal to do? Effective delegation is like a relay race: someone needs to let the baton go, but someone needs to grab it and run, too. And you’re looking at your team and concluding that you are more than willing to let go, but the people who are supposed to take the baton aren’t doing it like you had hoped.

But is that true? Let me illustrate something for a minute. Think back to the last time you left on a much deserved, extended vacation. You really need this. It’s overdue. You’re about to lose your mind, and the main goal, as you prepare over the three late nights before you board the plane is to not be bothered while you are gone. You brief everyone, empty your head, and transfer everything you can think of to paper. For the first time in the firm’s history, the culture has moved from oral to written and it feels good.

And even more than that, you decide to trust your people while you’re gone. Whatever happens, happens. It’s time that they stepped up.

The Big Surprise…and Revelation

You have a great time and you hardly think about work, but what happens while you’re gone? Everything is fine! And they are proud of how much they didn’t need you! It’s amazing!

And then what do you do? Insert yourself into the process again by insisting on seeing things before they go to the client. You don’t put things in writing, inevitably requiring everyone to bother you again.

And here’s the entire point of this illustration:

You’re not involved when you don’t want to be,

and the only reason you are involved is because you want to be.

Here’s my advice, in sum:

1. Figure out what being involved “does” for you.
2. Sign up for therapy and fix it.
3. Apply that energy and brilliance doing the things that only you can and will do for the firm.

Finally

Here’s how Seth Godin put it in This is Strategy: Make Better Plans:

You know you should be focusing on the long-term journey….

But instead, there's a queue of urgent things, all justifiable, all requiring you and you alone to handle them. And so you do, pushing off the important in favor of the urgent.

Of course, everyone has this challenge, but some people manage to get past it. Even you, the last time you made a major move forward. Think about it—those urgencies from a few years ago: who's handling them now?

The reason we go for urgent is that it makes us feel competent. We're good at it. We didn't used to be, but we are now.

Important, on the other hand, is fraught with fear, with uncertainty and with the risk of failure.

Now that you know why, you can dance with it.

May the force be with you. You’re going to need it!