Control Freak

My company started out, quite literally, as a mom and pop operation. My bosses started the company with just the two of them and we have gradually grown to a size of more than twenty people. While that represents excellent growth for us, it also presents new problems in managing such a crowd of staff and supporting so customers.

We hired a lawyer named Trevor who specializes in working with technical development firms exactly like us that are going through growing pains. He's only with us for six months but thanks to his experience, he's helping us get through this phase. Working with our staff and the owners, he's reviewing our internal processes across the company. We're formalizing departments and a new management structure, among numerous other changes.

As part of this major re-organization, he's helping us clarify how our software development processes should work. I've been the Project Manager for a fair amount of time now and I always considered myself to be the one that "got things done." I worked hard to ensure that our software plans were completed and that our customers kept seeing a steady line of updates. There are a lot of unofficial requirements to pull something like that off and if no one stepped up to the plate, it was my job to jump in and get 'er done. It didn't matter what the task was, I could pinch-hit almost anything.

As we started to analyze and define what our official roles were supposed to be, it soon became clear that I was all over the place. I did concentrate on our software development but I also dabbled in technical support, sales quotes, software design, business case analysis and employee assessments. Officially or unofficially, I was overseeing our beta testers, our technical writer and our programmers, for a total of about eight people. In addition to that, I was one of the key people analyzing customer suggestions and planning out the next software versions. Fun fun.

During this re-org recently, I was in a meeting with a Trevor and he mentioned that I have my fingerprints on everything. If someone drops the ball, I'm the one that picks it up. If the work isn't quite up to snuff, I'm the one that goes in to clean it up. In short, I did everything and I was a bit of a control freak.

"Moi? Une control freak? Je ne le crois pas!"

Trevor didn't use those exact words but it was somewhat shocking to hear that assessment of my professional skills. I've been around this company for more than seven years now, since it was just a wee thing. I think that I have pretty clear ideas about what good management is, what it takes to run a software development company and who people will follow. Throw in my years of experience with so many churches and so many different styles of pastoring and I think that I'm pretty wary of any kind of bad leadership.

So I chewed on that for about thirty seconds during our meeting and I realized that Trevor might be on to something here. I thought it through a little more later that night and by the next day, I was surprised to find that I was in complete agreement with the man. My goodness, I am a control freak. Freaky!

In the past as leader of the youth worship team or different cell groups, I have focused quite specifically on developing the other young people as leaders in their own right. In the case of the youth worship team, I eventually worked myself out of a job as Aleah took over almost all of the responsibility. (Here's smilin' at you, kid.) At work, I regularly encourage our programmers to challenge design decisions and to offer their own ideas, to speak up and question their orders and debate the concepts. How can I be a control freak if I do all of that so intentionally?

And yet, here I am. Even if some of it was by necessity, that doesn't change where I ended up. Life is funny sometimes, especially in the way that we become the very thing that we dislike. Trevor was right and I do need to let go of these reins. More power to the people. On with the show!