05 Aug 5 Tips to Better Macromanagement

In my latest book, The Entrepreneur’s Growth Startup Handbook (John Wiley & Sons/Bloomberg Press), I note nine key personality traits I believe make it more likely you will succeed as an entrepreneur. One key attribute to help you build something substantial: being a macromanager. What is that? Obviously the opposite of being a micromanager. The best entrepreneurs learn to delegate day-to-day tasks. Why is micromanagement bad? It leads to resentment and lack of trust, and takes you away from the important things you need to attend to. Here are five suggestions for improving your macromanagement skills to help you focus on dreaming, planning, assisting in key hires and helping solve the major problems that arise.

1. Embrace the “D” word: you delegate and let your people make mistakes, but work to ensure they learn from them. If they don’t, maybe they are not the right employees for you.

2. Accept your employees’ different business styles. So long as it doesn’t undermine you or hurt the business. You send short emails, they send long ones. So what?

3. As President Reagan liked to say about the then-USSR, trust but verify. Give people the freedom they need, but maintain a healthy skepticism about their abilities and motivations. Spot checking is good.

4. Close your eyes and pray. If you assume no one can do things as well as you, find people who at least can do things well enough. You can check and check but in the end you have to just say go.

5. Maintain your relationships. You let your salespeople do their thing, but take some time to make sure the customers realize the value you personally add to their relationship as well. This makes it tougher for the salesperson to abscond with the relationship and allows you to continue to allow the team member to do the heavy lifting with the customer.