Whether you are the owner of a small business or manage a team, there are some questions to keep in mind that will ensure that the way you manage those under you is helping and not hindering overall productivity.

1. If you’ve hired quality employees, let them know what you want done and not necessarily exactly how to do it (within business guidelines of course). If you have time to micromanage every aspect of how someone is doing something maybe you as the manager don’t have enough to do. And if you have to micromanage to in order to ensure things are done the right way, it means you need better employees. Usually an employee should be better than you at that specific thing you hired them to do, otherwise why did you hire them?

2. Figuring out how to fix a problem is worth more than figuring out who is to blame, as far as your bottom line is concerned. With that said however, if the same problems persist despite fixes, it may be time to get to the source, which may mean figuring out who or what is to blame.

(more…)