Jean on the Job
Perfectionism can kill a good manager. Yes, it's a great quality-to be concerned with creating the perfect program or a quality document. It's the perfectionism you require from the human being who works for you that can be a problem.
We all want quality assurance. Expectations from a technical machine can be quite high. Expectations from a human machine need to be altered sometimes and for some people.
Your best sales person may have the ugliest reports, missing numbers and coffee stains. Don't give up on teaching organizational skills, but do lower your expectations for awhile.
The engineer who works 70 hours a week may really flub up in the customer meeting. Although he designed and wrote the perfect program, he cannot clearly describe it to your most important client.
If you have personal attachments to certain quality issues, describe them well to your subordinates. Help them to understand your personal fetish about this. Then try to sell them on meeting your personal quality measurements of those issues. Finally, expect just a little less than you would do.
The trouble with perfectionist managers is that they have to work too hard. They can do everything so efficiently and better than most of their subordinates, so they do the work themselves. Stop it. Delegate the work. Expect 80-95 percent efficiency, and go home.
An enormous number of our college-graduated professionals have a form of dyslexia or some minor learning disabilities. You will have to work around them. Another huge percentage of our working population are hyperactive adults with attention deficit disorders that prevent them from full focus on one arena. Some employees just can't multi-task. The numbers on all of the above afflictions are not in yet, but I would guess that 40 percent of your employees have some disability that prevents them from learning in your form or perfecting some tasks the way you so easily could.
So, ease up, buddy. This is what I tell the most seriously scientific companies in this valley. They do not call me a heretic or kick me out. They keep asking for more. They know it is actually more efficient to allow for corrections and slippage than to create such an anxious employee that he explodes-or goofs up anyway. Loosen the reins. Communication is the key to the standard deviation in the machine called human.
Jean A. Hollands, is CEO of the Growth & Leadership Center. Write to GLC, 1451 Grant Road, Mountain View, 94040.