3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Micromanage at Work

Your business is your baby. You spent long nights, weekends, and dedicated everything to its success, especially in the early years. It’s completely understandable that you are protective over it and that you want to have a finger on everything that’s related to your business. But should you micromanage your business?

Now that it’s been a few years and your business has grown, you might have hired a few people to work for you regularly or hired a few contractors who complete tasks for you on occasion. Although it might be tempting to redo their work or just skip asking them to do anything altogether, this would be a huge mistake.

Micromanaging, or controlling every aspect of a business no matter how small, is a really bad precedent to set at work.

Here are just a few reasons why you shouldn’t micromanage at work—and how to effectively assign tasks to employees, assistants, and contractors.

Micromanagement Discourages Innovation

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Two heads are better than one,” and we should be constantly implementing this strategy in everyday business scenarios. When you micromanage, you take away an employee or contractor’s ability to imagine completing tasks another way—a way that might be faster or better than what you instructed.

Sure, you may have built this business, but there’s no way that it’s going to grow if you stifle the creativity of those who are working with you.

Micromanagement Causes Delays

If you’re constantly re-doing tasks that someone has already completed for you or working on things that you should be delegating, then things are going to get bottlenecked. You may think that you’re saving time by doing things “your way” or “the only way that things will get done is if I do them,” but you’re actually wasting a lot of time by micromanaging.

When you notice that deadlines are getting missed or clients are calling and asking for an explanation for why something is late, you might want to examine your work habits and see if you can delegate a little better.

Micromanagement Causes Dissatisfaction at Work

Not only does micromanaging put more work on you, but it also causes major dissatisfaction for everyone working with you. Micromanagement can cause resentment and turnover, which is definitely not something you want if you’re really busy.

How to Better Delegate

The best way to better delegate tasks is to hire people who you really trust to do the work. Learn to let go a little bit. Once you’ve reviewed their work a couple of times and see that they can confidently accomplish things on their own, trust that they can do a good job. It may take a bit of getting used to on your end, but ultimately it will be better for the growth of the company if you allow yourself to let go of small tasks that weigh you down.

photo credit: Good Eye Might