Q. I'm sorry to say it, but the owner of the company where I work is the quint essential micro manager. He has hired three managers (I'm one of them), but he won't give us any decision making authority. I'm not sure why he won't delegate, but it's killing our company. Because everything has to go through the boss, we can't respond quickly enough. What would you recommend? A. In the process of doing research for our book, Let Go to Grow; why some businesses thrive and others fail to reach their potential , we interviewed the owners of more than 100 small and midsize businesses. One of the consistent patterns we found was that entrepreneurs had difficulty effectively delegating decision-making authority. The primary reason is that delegating decision-making authority means giving up a measure of control and that's hard for many entrepreneurs.Yet, if their businesses are to continue to grow, these owners will have to overcome their reticence to let go. Failure to do so will mean that the principal's workload will continue to increase. At some point, they will be overwhelmed and out of capacity. These business owners will unwittingly become the constraint to growth in their own businesses.This is a bad situation, but the only thing worse than not delegating when it's needed is delegating before the proper infrastructure is in place. Doing so can send the business spiraling out of control before the owner realizing what is happening―we've seen it all too frequently. Putting the proper infrastructure in place to allow safe delegation means three things:
