Why I Stopped Managing and Started Enabling

How throwing out the management rulebook led to the highest-performing teams I’ve ever worked with

I’ve watched countless teams get buried under bureaucracy.

More approvals. Longer processes. Stricter oversight. Managers adding layers of “quality control” that actually killed momentum.

The worst case was a product team I inherited at a mid-sized tech company. Every decision required three levels of approval. Every feature needed sign-off from five different stakeholders. Every change went through a committee.

The result? A team that moved like molasses and avoided taking any risks.

Sprint planning took longer than actual development. Innovation died in endless review cycles. The most talented people started looking for other jobs.

Then I started working with teams that threw out the rulebook.

The foundation of high performance isn’t more management—it’s better systems.

Instead of adding controls, they embraced trust over control. Instead of avoiding disagreement, they welcomed conflict as a path to better solutions. Instead of micromanaging workflows, they gave people autonomy to work and improve on their own.

Those teams consistently outperformed the heavily managed ones.

The difference wasn’t talent or resources. It was the environment that enabled high performance instead of preventing it.

In many organizations, rules and layers of approval slow things down. But the solution isn’t chaos—it’s creating better structure through shared purpose and mutual accountability.

Most managers operate from a fundamental misunderstanding about what drives performance.

Traditional management assumption: People need oversight to do good work
Reality: People need clarity and trust to do their best work

Traditional approach: Add processes to prevent mistakes
What actually happens: Processes slow down everything, including fixing mistakes

Traditional metric: Control and compliance
What drives results: Autonomy and alignment

The harder you try to control everything, the more you create exactly the conditions that make high performance impossible.

The Six-Step High-Performance Team System

Instead of adding more rules, I started building systems that enabled teams to perform at their best:

Step 1: Create a Team Charter That Actually Matters

A team charter outlines purpose, values, and ways of working that everyone actually follows.