When I first started as a manager, I thought this is my chance: Now I can show everybody how it’s done. I started one big project after another. One big change after another.

But I neglected an important part of my manager job there: Taking care of my team, especially the little things.

Overflowing inboxes in Slack, mail, and HR tools to approve vacations and expenses. People were waiting for a vacation approval for weeks. One employee was frustrated because his flight prices doubled while I didn’t respond — and I can relate.

One of my team members approached me and told me people don’t want to send me messages anymore because they fear to annoy me and think it will fire back if I remember them as annoying.

I became a manager I would have hated — busy looking important instead of helping people reach their potential. Hard to do when they are worrying about vacation approvals for six weeks.

I needed to fix that.

So I set two rules for myself:

• I answer every message on the same day and can hop in a call in the next 24 hours.
• I work on admin stuff (approvals, vacation, expenses) within 48 hours.

Daily reminder: 15 minutes at 09:00 for approval, quick check at the end of the day to make sure I haven’t missed a message. This reminder made sure nothing piled up.

This is a simple rule, and it works. I won’t tell you I can stick to it 100 percent, there is also a time when I open a request, receive a call and forget it, I am human.

Still, the majority of the time, it works.

Now, you special corporate manager, may tell me this doesn’t work at my company.

It does. In every setting I have worked in. It's like with everything in life: You either find a reason why it works, or why it doesn't.

And it makes a difference: If your direct reports don’t have to wait for the small things, they are also more relaxed when bigger things take time.