Don’t you just love the smell of control in the morning?
Your day stretches out in front of you and you’re ready to take on the world. But first, you have to make sure everything is running smoothly. And I mean EVERYTHING.
It’s not enough that your team tells you everything is ok, you need to know for yourself. So you check everything and redo work that isn't up to your standard. By the end of the day, you’re exhausted and you haven’t conquered getting out the door, let alone taking over the world.
This isn’t control, it’s chaos.
You know the secret sauce that’s missing: you’re not outsourcing and/or you're resisting delegating tasks. No surprises there.
But something is stopping you.
You figure that if there is hesitation there on your part, it must be your intuition telling you that your business isn’t ready for you to loosen the reins just yet.
I totally get this mindset. I’m with you!
On the other hand and as much as I hate to admit it, I also totally get that my reluctance to outsource and delegate comes from my ego. And if you’re totally honest with yourself, so does yours.
You’re probably coming up with all sorts of reasons why you can’t get anyone else to do it. All the reasons sound [pathetically] valid to your inner control freak.
Yeah. Nah. Sorry to say this, but: you are not that special.
Here’s some common control freak themes … and my response...
“No-one will do it the way I do it.”
That’s true. They may do it better than you do it.
Is it time that you took on board the feedback from your team or your peers? A fresh set of eyes can do wonders for your business. Talk to your team and find out who’s willing to work with you to take your processes to the next level.
“I’ll spend more time managing the person than I will save, so I might as well do it myself.”
Yeah, right. Can I remind you why you’re here? How has ‘doing it all yourself’ worked out for you so far?
This is either the result of a poor process, micro-managing, or poor recruitment practices. If you’re not sure why you feel this way, then choose one of these reasons and find ways to address it. Hint: Don’t blame other people. If this is a recurring theme for you, then address the common denominator: You.
“This process is so damned complicated, it’s too hard to explain it to someone else.”
Try explaining it to someone else. Listen to them and act on their suggestions about how you can simplify it.
Again, getting another’s perspective and opening your own mind to new ideas may be the catalyst for revolution in your business. Have you looked at ways to automate mundane tasks? Perhaps you can get your accounting software to talk to your bank and streamline your bank reconciliation? If you’re working with multiple systems, investigate where you have unnecessary redundancies, such as storing data in more than one place. Can you eliminate those duplicates? Are you still working with offline systems? Moving some things to the cloud could open the door to better team collaboration.