Also in our upcoming May issue of SME Insight, Dr. Herminia Fajardo, our columnist who has had several decades of experience in the SME sector, talks about the critical transition from being a micro enterprise to being a larger, more professional organization.

Here’s the thing: many entrepreneurs never learn to grow up. Having gotten used to running the details of the company’s operations — micro-managing, poring over every person’s work, fiddling with the details — these “baby entreps” eventually end up doing more harm than good as the company grows.

Why? Because large companies need to be professionalized. In other words, large companies run because of the trust factor: entrepreneurs have to learn to delegate the details to their organizations. They have to learn to allow their subordinates to do what they think is best to accomplish the objectives that are handed down to them, even if their ideas may not exactly be what the entrepreneur had in mind.

Or else the company may face an implosion.

Such an implosion can happen because (a) these baby entreps can enter a “meddle mode,” imposing their opinions even on the tiniest details of the firm’s operations, with the end result being that employees never learn to become truly autonomous; and (b) the baby entreps themselves, obsessed with micro management, never learn to run the firm from a higher managerial level.

Result? The organization never grows up. Because the employees never grow up. Because the entrepreneur hasn’t learned to grown up.

The problem: these baby entreps are characterized by a distrust versus their own subordinates. Nothing their subordinates do is ever right by these entrepreneurs’ minds. And the reason for this is that baby entreps tend to still live in the days when they had absolute control over every little detail of the company… and therefore got so used to (and probably miss) those glory days.

Dr. Fajardo also mentions the phenomenon wherein baby entreps fail to give proper guidance to their subordinates… and then blame the subordinates whenever what they want to happen does not materialize. Sad, yes, but this is an all too common phenomenon.

Baby entreps need to acknowledge that it is time to let go of their old roles as micro managers. Besides, it’s for their own good (the stress of trying to oversee every little detail of a large company is impossible!). They have to realize that as they go up the managerial ladder, they lose control over the little details… in favor of gaining control over the bigger picture. As the entrepreneur becomes a professional manager, his job should become more that of a director, giving directions in broad strokes, rather than using a fine-tipped brush.

Failure to acknowledge this can lead to a failure in attaining true growth, especially as the baby entreps end up spending most of their time chasing little victories rather than fighting the bigger battle.