Q. How did yourecognize that youneeded to hang backand let people growfrom their mistakes?
Probably working withother organizations where they do micro-manage and seeing howemployees are not satisfied and seeing how production and performance is lacking. Everybody is afraid to make adecision because they will getchewed out if they make adecision that the micromanager doesn’t accept. With micro-managing, you see change indirection of the company consistently because it just isn’t agood business atmosphere.And I think retaining employees is also difficult under thatscenario — there’s so muchcommon sense to it.
Q. How do you keep othersin your company from micro-managing?
That’s all a part of taking timeto grow a team. When you aregrowing the company, you’repicking people or bringing people in who pretty much havethat same kind of philosophy.
If I had an operations personthat was all about micromanaging, he wouldn’t be here. If I hadour estimator for project managers micromanaging and notletting the superintendents dowhat they feel is correct or givethem the opportunity to betterthemselves, then they probablywouldn’t be here, either.
It’s a team. You don’t get aSuper Bowl team the first year.It takes time to get the wholegroup interacting with eachother the right way.
Q. As you’re forming thatcohesive team, how do you copewith the fact that people aregoing to make big mistakes?
There are two types of mistakes. One is a mistake that isa result of something out oftheir control, and then there’sa mistake that is made justbecause of lack of commitment. When you’re in a veryfast-paced business, you haveto roll the dice a lot of times,and if it comes up the wrongnumber, sitting around coming up with a solution is somuch better than chewingsomebody out that reallycares.
It’s kind of like treating people the way you want to betreated, the old Golden Rule,and you apply that in businesswith common sense and within a guideline that makes acompany successful.
Then, make sure you don’thave a big ego. That’s wheremicromanaging comes in,when you think no one cando this except me, I’m betterthan thou — that whole thing,to me, is a road map to failure.
There are many roads to getto the same destination. Sometake a little longer, some takea little shorter, but you getthere, and you might learnsomething if you go down adifferent road. I learn a lotevery day. Every day is agrowth period intellectuallyfor everybody, and if you’re soclose-minded not to look atother people’s opinions andaccept them and let them goforward with them, you’re notallowing yourself or theorganization to get better.
HOW TO REACH: Sports Construction Group LLC, (216) 241-9900 or www.sportscongroup.com
