Realized I was micromanaging my warehouse team for 18 months before someone finally called me out

Tbh I thought I was being helpful by checking every packing list and double checking every label before shipments went out. My operations manager pulled me aside after a 14 hour day last April and straight up told me I was slowing everything down by not trusting the crew. He showed me the numbers - we were averaging 23 minutes per order instead of the industry standard 12 minutes because of my bottleneck. The tipping point was when he pointed out our error rate was actually higher under my supervision than when I let the team run their own checks. I had this idea that if I wasn't in control things would fall apart, but really I was just getting in the way of people who knew their jobs better than I did. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized your involvement was hurting more than helping?

2 comments

2 Comments

elliot_grant381mo ago

Wait has nobody talked about how this might be making your team feel less confident in their own skills over time? lol. If you were double checking everything for 18 months, they probably started second guessing themselves instead of trusting their own training. I saw this happen at a buddy's shop where the manager kept fixing minor stuff and eventually the whole crew just waited for him to tell them what to do instead of taking initiative. Your ops manager did you a solid by showing you the hard numbers though - sometimes you need that gut check to realize you're building a crutch culture without meaning to.

the_uma1mo ago

Yeah that "crutch culture" thing is exactly what I was building without realizing it.