I’ll admit something: I caught myself doing it this week.
I’m a founder. I had handed something off, and then I found myself pulling it right back. Checking. Redoing. Holding on.
Every founder knows the feeling. And I think it’s one of the biggest hidden limits on growing any business, including a medical practice.
Underneath it is a trust issue. “Nobody else will do this the way I would.”
Here’s what I keep coming back to: the way past that trust issue isn’t trusting blindly. It’s managing.
Hand it off. Then stop caring how they do it, and care a lot about the results.
What outcome did we agree on? Did we get it? If not, why not?
That’s management. Not doing it yourself. Not hovering. Results.
It’s not perfect. I still slip, clearly. But when I catch it, I step back, let it go, and go back to managing the outcome.
For physicians, there’s an extra layer, and it deserves respect.
In most businesses, if a task goes wrong, you lose time or money. In medicine, people’s lives are involved. So it’s completely understandable that physicians hold on tighter.
But that’s exactly why the line matters. Clinical decisions that affect patients should stay close to the physician. Purchase orders, schedules and vendor calls shouldn’t.
What’s one thing you’ve handed off and then quietly taken back?
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