6 Steps to Overcoming a Project Management Control Addiction
- Reach Your Breaking Point — Nothing is going to change until you are alone in the office at 2 AM in the morning running through test scripts and asking yourself, “What the heck am I doing?” In order for you to make changes in your freakishly controlling life you need to reach rock bottom. You may be so far gone that you need your colleagues to perform an intervention on your behalf.
Perhaps they’ve already tried. Have they told you to leave your phone home and not check your email when you’re on vacation? Have they told you that “they’ve got this” — interpreted as “leave me alone, I know what I’m doing — ”?
Have you lost good people because they can’t take your stifling management style? Only when you’ve admitted to yourself that you have a problem can you begin to make a change.
2.Realize People are Just as Capable as You Are — There are a lot of smart and capable people in this world, and you are just one of them. That means others around you are going to make spectacularly good decisions and pull off amazing things…just like you do.
It also means that people are going to make some horrifically bad decisions or fall short of the goal from time to time…just like you do. Get your head around the fact that things can go on without you, and surprisingly well. I always had the delusion that whenever I left a company, they would go down in flames because I was no longer there.
I figured I would have to put “no longer in business” on my resume, next to each of the companies I had left. Guess what? They’re all still around and doing just fine without me. Why? Because they have capable people that know what they’re doing and that make things work.
3.Give People an Entire Task — Now that you understand that people are talented and skilled, give them a whole task to do. Don’t divvy it up into a bunch of small chunks and have them check back with you ever 15 minutes for more direction.
This may be appropriate if you are working with an entry level person, but most projects are staffed with professionals. Have enough faith in people that they can take sizable portions of responsibility off your plate and run with it. Let them know you are available for any questions or issues that may arise. Other than that, let them go.
4.Provide Enough Direction (in Writing) — This is more for you than it is for them. Once you’ve given them the entire task to complete you can chronicle your direction by putting it in an email. This will help make sure you didn’t miss anything. It also gives you a level of comfort that they have all the information they could possibly need to make their task a success.
5.Let Them Go — You’ve now set someone up for success. Let them go and succeed. Chances are they’ll come back with a 95% success rate and the 5% that may have gotten a bit off track (just like it would have happened with you) really doesn’t matter that much anyway.
6.Check in With Them Infrequently — You read that right, check in with them IN-frequently. This will help cure your control issues. When that desire to pop around every 4–8 hours just to see how things are going comes, resist that urge. You’ve given them direction, you’ve provided it in writing, and you’ve opened the door for them to get back to you with any issues.
Move forward with the assumption that everything is running smooth unless you hear otherwise. Feel free to check in every now and then but do so in a manner that doesn’t make them think you don’t trust them. “Do you need any help from me?” is always a good question to ask. Checking in with them infrequently will also allow you to check in on your other obligations frequently.
Go home early to be with your family or spend time with your friends. Control freaks can easily set themselves up for burn-out and in the long run nobody benefits.
A final word of advice for those who are starting out on their less controlling journey…give yourself a day or two of wiggle room at the end of the task. Again, this provides you with a higher level of comfort than anything else.
If things don’t go exactly as you planned, you have a bit of time to get the results closer to what you would like to see. You’ll quickly find that there’s nothing you would change and the need for this buffer will disappear.
