The Boss Pendulum
An attempt to shed better light on 2 frequently-observed but completely opposite proclivities of many business leaders.
Picture a pendulum, typical in grandfather clocks, swinging left to right, and then right to left. The hands of the clock move continuously, as the pendulum swings almost endlessly, powering the clock for who-knows-how-long.
Imagine removing the pendulum from the clock's housing and pinning its pivot onto a nail at the mid-point of a wall, where the pendulum is allowed to swing unrestricted towards the extreme ends of the wall. Then imagine putting up 2 signs, one on each end. One reads "micromanagement" while the other, "abdication". You would then have what I have recently started and will now often be referring to as The Boss Pendulum.
Bosses, particularly business owners, generally have all the decision-making power over their entire businesses. Having been a business owner myself in years prior, it is quite fair for me to attest to the anxieties brought about by the risks I took with whatever resources I had plunked down into the business. I did everything to make sure that things were done correctly, or at least, in the way that conformed to my appetite for risk. In short, I micromanaged. So naturally I called all the shots, and all my employees had to do was to do what they're told. I need to say at this point though, that when both employers and employees do this long enough, certain habits will tend to stick. And stickier they will surely become as the years wear on.
But even in small businesses, owners just simply cannot do everything by themselves and decide every small thing on their own, over an extended period of time. It can be annoying and frustrating, more often than not. It can also get hilarious and comedic. But it simply cannot hope to be described as sustainable. Many business owners get to a point when they realize that trying to do everything only gets in the way of focusing on a shorter list of tasks that are actually strategic to the growth of the business. And so lock, stock and barrel, they delegate a lot of previously bottle-necked tasks to their employees, who more often are not ready enough to actually know what to do, let alone how to do it. This is actually more abdication, than delegation. And while employers expect some of their more capable and more resourceful employees to multi-task, this is typically the part where employees start labelling their bosses as slave drivers. There are of course, a lot less flattering labels.
I can write at least a 100-page book on thoughts and lessons from my own Boss Pendulum misadventures in just only 6 years of owning and running a charcuterie micro-manufacturing operation. Instead, I will make a very brief mention of one particular decision to purchase a bone-saw, without first consulting with my staff if they would actually use it. In a misguided attempt to cut down on material costs, I ended up spending for a machine which I was forced to operate myself because everyone else had been afraid to do so, and which I had to personally clean right after each use, because I actually had to dismantle it to clean up the hard-to-reach parts. I had originally planned to ramp down my involvement in the manufacturing side of the business, but by insisting on justifying my purchase I ended up getting drawn into it a bit more than when I started. They say pride comes before the fall, likely true in this case. I would eventually sell the machine off for less than sixty percent of its original price, just to generate some much-needed cash flow. It was funny enough to make me laugh whenever I look back at the whole thing, but in reality, it was a very expensive lesson.
The Brits have a saying: "Just because one can, does not mean one should."
Some close friends know that my barbecue smoker episode was a lot worse than my bone-saw episode. But I will just save that story for whom I could share it face-to-face.
The Boss Pendulum is actually a trap for people who aren't cognizant of it whenever it rears its ugly head. In order to elude it, one has to understand that what drives it is none other than fear. Fear of things not being done correctly or in a manner that is familiar, leads to micromanagement. If it's not fear then it's vanity, in which case it's still fear of one's inescapable obsolescence. Fear of not having enough time to accomplish everything that matters, leads to abdication. If it's not fear then it's surrender, in which case it's still fear of things that have grown much larger, because they have been put off longer than they needed to be.
My Aussie mentor, business partner and long-time friend, who also happens to be my former employer, once shared with me this valuable lesson he says he should have learned sooner: "A business owner should spend more time working ON their business, rather than in it."
Bosses are never to going to find the solution, or their way out of the Boss Pendulum trap, through the absence or eradication of fear. Rather, the only way forward is for bosses to acknowledge those very 2 things which they are afraid of - the fear of things not being done correctly, and the fear of not having enough time. It is because of this acknowledgement that great systems are built on top of well-conceived processes, which in turn are built on top of realistically sustainable policies.
It is precisely these systems, processes and policies that will limit the wild swings of the pendulum towards the 2 extremes. The only wild swings people probably look forward to are the ones found on amusement park rides. But in the case of all grandfather clocks, we'd all want the pendulums to keep swinging for the clocks to continue functioning. We just don't want them swinging uncontrollably. And this is probably what their housings are built for.