Have you been overcompensating for your operations team’s weaknesses? Then listen up.
When you live and eat operations, you know how things work and the best, most efficient ways to do them.
And your team is busy. You’ve likely built guard rails for them to minimize burnout because you take good care of your team.
So, when a crisis hits, if you sense your team lacks the time, resources, or urgency to get it done right, you might have trouble keeping your hands off the wheel. Sometimes it’s easier to handle problems yourself instead of guiding someone else to do it.
How close to home does this hit?
In this episode, I’ll talk about breaking that habit so you can slow down to speed up. And I’ll give you eight steps to boost your team’s capacity to navigate crises themselves.
The Rut Most Operations Execs Get Stuck In
You know that feeling – the feeling that what you do is who you are.
As the bow of your org’s operations, you provide direction and consistency that keeps it all moving forward.
So of course, it bugs you to see the gaps, problems, and inefficiencies. Almost every operations executive I speak with talks about how hard it is to draw a line between life and work. Not because they don’t want to, but because of how integral they feel to the system.
And Nerd Alert: It reminds me of L3-37 in Solo, and how she becomes the Millennium Falcon’s navigational system. That’s how it feels when you are plugged into operations so intimately.
Naturally, you want to make sure things flow smoothly. And it’s admirable that you are so adept at diagnosing and fixing problems. But that’s a trap. And it’s unsustainable.
The Benefits of Letting Others Steer
Earlier this year I worked with a client who was overcompensating for his team’s weaknesses.
This quick-witted and loyal executive has a mental antenna that is attuned to anticipate problems. He’s always at the ready with contingency plans, ready to leap in and assure success and prevent disaster.
He’s learned the hard way about the price of leaning into this gift too much. It was eating into his ability to sleep at night and his quality of life. It also kept his team from trusting themselves and feeling empowered to take risks.
With hearty self-awareness and intentions, he notices where he gets stuck now.
He recently said: I’ve now got a stronger ability to pause and not just react. It allows me to build a better strategy that’s more appropriate. . . I give them a chance to be the champion rather than swooping in to solve it for them.
Isn’t that the leader’s job, anyway? Not to do the work for others, but to educate and empower them to do it.
When you find a way to take the wheel less frequently, you may also find that you:
- develop your team
- right-size responsibilities
- build trust
- foster innovation and creativity
- enable growth
- focus on higher-level work that raises overall productivity and efficiency and
- boost your sense of well-being and balance.
8 Steps for Ops Execs Who Take the Wheel Too Much
So, if the tendency to grab the wheel resonates with you, how do you get a wedge in that and do it differently? Take it on like a project.
- First, just notice where you leap in to grab the wheel. Those places where you dip down naturally into what others’ areas of responsibility are (or should be). Self-awareness is the first step. Often you make the decision so quickly, this might take some discipline.
- Consider this an experiment. Train yourself to expect to go a little slower in the short term to go faster and further long term.
- Take calculated risks about where you can let others drive a bit more. Start with small and specific situations that won’t overwhelm you or them, where they can learn and even fail short term.
- Redefine success. Of course, you’ll strive for excellence, but time is a limiting factor. Get real about what’s good enough and where you’ve been holding an unattainable standard.
- Create clear, specific requirements for success. Differentiate a minimum level requirement from your ideal target outcome.
- Block off time to write the manual and create the checklist. It’s ok if your first draft is imperfect. Consider it a living document between you and the team member you’ve chosen.
- Provide training and coaching time, as well as a clear hand-off procedure if needed.
- This might be the hardest one because it gets back to that self-awareness: Be patient. Patience is the ability to stay calm and find something else to occupy you while you’re waiting for an outcome. You’ve got plenty of other things to do, right? Learn to manage your anxiety about letting things go.
Since you’re listening to this episode, my guess is that you’d like to break free of your overcompensating habits. You don’t have to do it alone. I can help you get your arms around mastering your mind and setting your team up for success. Visit yourfuturerealized.com/VIP to connect with me.
You can’t stop the chaos, but you can change the game.
