When I took over the management of the company, the beginning was very tough, working six days a week, for many hours each day. Something had to change.
The next step was to have a look on the decision-making process. I had to deal with two types of decisions: the too simple ones that didn't even hit my threshold, and the highly technical/ professional ones. I didn't want to bother with the former, and for the latter, I always thought, let those who truly understand this field make the decisions. Or at least, give me the necessary information in a small package that I could understand, but only what was really necessary for me to make a decision.
The first type was easy; I just had to say: you know how we did it last time, I am sure, You will be able to solve it. Or, when one of the production team leaders complained to me at my door that there were no perforations in the notepad, we should get a different type, I told him to ask the responsible colleague at the neighboring desk.
For the technical questions, we developed individual solutions. For special, urgent shipments, for example, we simplified the process to one question: should it be fast or cheap? Once that was decided by me, the rest of the related decisions followed "automatically", I mean that my completely competent warehouse manager decided with whom, how, and when to transport, and I didn't hear any more about the task. I trusted him, I knew he would handle it.
A different approach worked for maintenance. I'm not a technical person, so it made no sense for me to express opinions on matters I didn't understand deeply enough, so I slowly stopped attending their meetings, and let them to decide on the technical questions alone. When the team found the right solution, or when there were two good alternatives, we sat together, and they summarized for me what was worth knowing: how much it cost, why it was necessary, why it was good, and roughly how it worked.
This saved me many meeting hours where I would have just sat, in a meditative state and with my brain's screensaver on, or annoyed that I should be dealing with something else. And the decision-making meetings became more effective, too, because I started signalling when there was too much detail, and I could better lead the conversation, I concentrated on seeking some very specific information. I knew them, I remembered every penny spent on the subject before and its corresponding explanation, and I gained more and more knowledge about production, so even with little information, I could see if we really needed the given project and, if so, when we had the budget for it. At the end I only made the economic and strategic decisions, the technical ones were made by the experts without me.
This not only freed up more hours, but also expanded the decision-making scope and responsibility of maintenance. By delegating the decisions, I acknowledged their professional competencies, and mutual trust and respect grew.
When you reconsider your daily decisions, are there any that shouldn't necessarily be made by you? Do you usually make a signal when there's too much detail on a topic? How much and what type of information do you really need for a good decision?
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