A manager keeps redoing his employee's spreadsheets because it feels faster, but this habit burns out the team and creates a bottleneck at his desk. The fix isn't better people or longer hours, it's learning to hand work over and accept imperfect results.
I watched a manager in a coffee shop redo his employee spreadsheet at 8 AM, muttering, "It's just quicker if I just do it." That sentence is eating your whole career and you can't even hear yourself saying it anymore. I'll tell you how it happens because I did it for years. They do the thing at 80%. You'd have done it at 100%. So you quietly take it back and it feels efficient. It feels like leadership even, but it's neither. What you're actually doing is teaching your whole team that if they wait long enough, you'll step up and you'll do it. So every decision queues up at your desk and you wonder why you're exhausted. The way out isn't finding better people or working longer hours. Hours though. It's learning to hand something over properly, let it come back not quite perfect, and leave it alone. It sounds easy, it's a skill, and nobody ever taught you it. So I built you something that does. What to keep, what to let go, how to hand it over so it doesn't bounce straight back. First 90 Days as a Manager. It's £99, it's yours forever. The link is below. Go and get your week back.
