I have learned a long time ago that as a manager (or a parent for that matter) you can be overprotective and micromanage trying to ensure that the people you work with don't make mistakes.  Especially those mistakes that you have experienced in your lifetime.   However, all of your hard work cannot keep mistakes from happening.  It is inevitable.  By being overprotective and micromanaging you are robbing people of the very thing that keeps mistakes from happening in the future - by learning from your mistakes.

If you are going to help people not make mistakes, they need to understand what they did wrong and try to figure out how they will avoid the mistake in the future.   They can only truly understand and want to make correction if they experience it firsthand.   They may understand that the stove is hot and can hurt you, but to truly value that advice they may need to touch the stove to find out.   Despite your best intentions on keeping them away from the stove, they may test your judgment by touching when your back is turned.  Then they will know never to do that again.   Others may take your advice and never try to touch the stove, but they will always be questioning your judgment.

The same goes with management.   As a manager, you have learned that there are certain processes and policies that are exist because of past mistakes either learned by yourself or others. These processes and policies were put in place to avoid those mistakes in the future.  By how do you know that they are stay relevant over time?  Compliance to processes and policies isn’t enough.  Just like the stove, the underlying assumptions and judgments that were made need to be challenged.

When you learned to ride a bike, somebody helped you get the skills down as well as learning how to balance by holding the bike along side of you.   That gave you confidence initially.   Then the person let go.  At first, you failed miserably and perhaps even skinned up a knee.  The person can back and gave you some tips and held some more.  Then the person let go again.  This time you made a little more progress.  Eventually, the person helping had to stop helping and let you learn how to ride your bike.  Otherwise, if they kept holding the bicycle for you, you would end up relying on them for a long time and it would take you much longer to venture on your own.  Both you and the person helping you would be much more frustrated.

As a manager, it is important that mistakes are not made so that quality and efficiency are at its peak.  However, this can't be accomplished if you are "protecting the stove" too much.  Instead, you need to provide the guidance and flexibility to help people "ride the bike".   Let them make some mistakes, and then teach them to learn from them.  In the end, their skills and appreciation of processes and procedures that are in place will be valued.   Those processes and procedures will also be tested to ensure that they are relevant today as they were when they were put into place.