Micromanage your way to agency failure

Agency owners often micromanage their employees without even realizing it. They think that they are merely seeking better results, when in fact, they are slowing things down and demoralizing their teams.

When Chip and Gini speak with many owners, they express frustration with how many hours they work and how they can’t spend enough time on building the business because they are so deeply in the weeds.

The reality is that leaders need to trust their team members to do a good job — and then support them in that effort. Constant editing and fussing over the details adds little value.

Chip and Gini offer tips on how to break the cycle of micromanagement and empower your team to produce the best results possible.

Key takeaways

* Gini Dietrich: “Why have you hired experts to do this job for you if you’re not going to let them do the job?”

* Chip Griffin: “You want to take time off. You want to get work off of your plate. You know what is the best way to do that? Take a week off and get work off your plate.”

* Gini Dietrich: “Why is my churn so high? Why are people leaving? It’s because you’re micromanaging them.”

* Chip Griffin: “What does perfect get you?”

Related

* Letting go as an agency owner

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini I’ve gotta go over how you keep track of the topics that you would like to discuss on this show. We’re gonna need to go through step by step what I need you to do, and I’m gonna watch you while you do it to make sure you do it correctly.

Gini Dietrich: Great. Can’t wait.

Chip Griffin: Right after this.

So see, I just don’t think that keeping topic ideas on a post-it note makes sense. I think we’ve got a shared Google Doc that that is a, the appropriate place for this. And you know, I don’t care whether the job gets done well, I don’t care whether you’ve got good ideas for topics and you can use the Post-It to remind – you need to do it my way, exactly my way, otherwise I’m gonna be unhappy.

Gini Dietrich: I really wanna flip you off right now, but I’m going to try to think of an appropriate response that’s not that,

Chip Griffin: well now, you know, if you’re listening, how your employees feel when you do this to them. Mm-hmm. And you micromanage them. Mm-hmm. Which is the topic for today’s show, because we know that, that most of you will profess not to be micromanagers and you say, I don’t wanna micromanage my team.

And yet I think it’s fair to say that, that Gini and I consistently see you guys micromanaging your teams.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely, yes. 100%. And it’s in the form of things like, oh, well this document needs a second set of eyes, and then you rewrite the whole thing. Or I don’t really trust that person to go to the meeting by themselves, so I’m gonna go too.