Peas and Carrots – Micromanaging

Hi, Sally Foley-Lewis here, and I want to talk to you about peas and carrots.

And the reason why I want to talk to youabout peas and carrots is because I was reminded of when my brother and I werekids, we were told that we had to eat everything on the plate, nothing left, nowastage in our house.

And that was a bit of a challenge for us, because there'salways peas and carrots.

I hate carrots, and my brother hates peas, and so what do we do about this? You know, we weren't allowed to leave the table until thoseplates were cleared out of all the food.

Now, what that gives me is a greatinsight into how not to micromanage.

Now Mum/Mom gave us an expectation.

It was all the food eaten, that's it.

That's the outcome she was after.

She didn't say how, that was up to us.

Now we did throw some food out the kitchen window once ortwice, until we got caught, so there might be some rules at play, that we have tostick within some boundaries, but we tested those boundaries.

And I don'tnecessarily recommend breaking the law just to test a law, but there are sometimes where you do have to come up close check it out and see how it's going.

Butaside from that, Mum really had a backseat to how we ended out eating allthat dinner.

What the result was, I ate my brother's peas and he ate my carrots: trade! The creativity that we were able to bring to the table, pun intended, beingable to finish our meals was because Mum didn't get in the way and tell usexactly what to do about every single element of our meal.

So here's the tiparound PRODUCTIVE LEADERSHIP, and if you're a bit of a micromanager, make surethat you're clear about your EXPECTATION, the desired outcome, and rather thanstepping into the the nitty-gritty of how, yes your job is to make sure no onebreaks the law, no one breaches policies and procedures, (no one throws their foodout the kitchen window), but give them the space.

Give your team members the space to actually be creative and find ways to make the magic happen.

Dinner went somuch faster when we were actually able to work out the trade factor.

So whatcould actually happen a lot faster and even more effectively when you get outof the HOW and just monitor, and be available to support, but you've given aclear expectation? Let me know how you go.

Source: Youtube