Slashdot Mirror
In Praise of Micromanagement
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Sydney Finkelstein writes at BBC that Steve Jobs, Mickey Drexler, and Jeff Bezos all have something in common. They are all builders of giant brands, very successful, and each is (or was) 'an unmitigated, unapologetic, micromanager!' The modern executive is taught — in business schools and in many jobs — that to manage people effectively is to delegate, and then get out of the way. But it's not delegate and forget says Finkelstein; it must be delegate and be intimately involved with what happens next. Micromanagers must be selective. You can't delve into the details of everything, and in fact superstar micromanagers don't. 'Steve Jobs was intimately involved with each product the company designed, and was even famously involved in designing the glass stairs at the Apple stores. But financial and operational issues were delegated to second-in-command and current Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook.' One key is that micromanagers must be experts. What could be worse than a manager immersed in the details who really doesn't know his stuff? Finally, it takes a strong, trusted team to be a micromanager. Could Steve Jobs have spent weeks with the iPhone design team if there was no one else to mind the store? If not for Tim Cook, perhaps the legend of Steve Jobs would not have turned out quite so well. 'The good news is that the best micromanagers are often the best talent developers,' writes Finkelstein. 'Their attention to detail, their intimate knowledge of the business and their deep involvement in what's going on actually enables more, not less, delegation.'"
What could be worse than a manager immersed in the details who really doesn't know his stuff?
I don't know but knowing your stuff probably has a bigger impact than micromanaging.
that look at the wrong numbers
You found possibly the only BBC site that isn't actually available in Britain
I'm doing it right.
You can't really extrapolate from a handful of CEOs what a good management strategy is. Very, very few managers are CEOs, or ever will be.
And is what's being described here even micromanagement? It's one thing to "micromanage" by insisting that your products meet your standards, it's another to insist on specific details like underlying technologies or what color the office chairs should be.
On the flip side, there's certain aspects of the old "HP Way" that could be described as micromanagement. But I guess it would be toxic to even mention HP when you're talking about best practices in running a company these days.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
A micromanager who didn't know his stuff.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=PC_Board_Esthetics.txt&characters=Steve%20Jobs&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=high&showcomments=1
I prefer managers that are capable of allowing their subordinates to doing their job. A manager, IMHO, who has to be kept in the loop every step of the way indicates, to me, someone who has no confidence in themselves or their subordinates or is a total asshat to begin with and should not be a manager from the start.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
If you make your underlings do exactly what you tell them to in exactly the way you tell them, it is easier to prove they screwed up later as you already know how it was done.
Steve Jobs had a vision beyond metrics. He believed in something more then making a profit and pursued that dream. It is little things like that which get missed. 99.99% of all micromanagers have no vision beyond their own paycheck.
Being a manager for a small group of varied IT folk, I think the idea is right. If you could know the requested outcome, delegate it to the experts, keep basic track of the timeline, and be done, that would be awesome. But people are not slurm. Joe and Suzy aren't getting along so Suzy refuses to commit her changes. Bob is out sick. Tom's new and while a great Java programmer is still getting up to speed on the .net framework. John is awesome, but he's just one guy. So you're kind of needed to walk people through difficult phases, keep things on track, show enthusiasm for the project, lead by example (showing up on time, doing your share of the work, being positive, etc).
Or you can just yell alot. Either way...
Yet another Saint Steve story.
He did delegate. Developers, developers, developers! Look how that worked out. One leaving, His Billness being questioned.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Like these?
I guess success like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder.
Oh yeah 2. Good luck teaching that expertise to MBAs.
or a asshole designer (of the frou-frou and eye candy sort) who knew how to sponge off others?
asshole sponge
... indicates there are no "good" micromanagers. Micromanagers tell people which ends of the toilet paper must go up in the can. Motivated, hands-on managers who tell people what they want (or don't want) and don't muck about with the "how" part aren't micromanagers. There has to be another name for them, but I'm not big on thesaurus software.
Micromanagement isn't the problem, it's microMISmanagement.
Reading the summary, it seems a mistake to turn Tim Cook as a CEO, while he would be an excellent COO...
If a micro-manager has less talent/intelligence/magic than his workers..he gets in the way and impedes progress
If a micro-manager has a clear vision, and it's an inspired vision..you would be wise to follow him
Example..Walt Disney
1) Make controversial statement (Micromanaging is good!)
2) Redefine your terms so that actually, it's not that controversial (Micromanagers "can't delve into the details of everything")
3) Spam your headline around the place
4) Profit
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
You can tell me what to do, or how to do it, but not both... This is a lesson most micromanagers forget. The truth is that there is no such think as effective micromanagement. By it's very nature, the project that micromanagers run can never grow bigger than what can be achieved by a single person. They are limited entirely by that person's ability and intelligence, and people with either of those two attributes usually realize it well enough to leave micromanagement alone.
Micromanagement, while sometimes necessary, is anything but effective. Any good manager will always realize this and will usually step out of the micromanagement role very shortly after taking it on.
The exceptions to the rule are always companies where the intended outcome *is* for the company or project to never grow further than one person can manage it. Sometimes ( eg Apple ) - this is the desired outcome - to remain small and very narrow in focus. Generally, though, that goes counter to modern business principles.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
And perhaps also, James Cameron... though I gather from the DVD commentaries that he is an asshat to work with.. maybe off the movie set he nice guy.
--hey! capcha thingy is "brutally"
I have been reading quite a bit about WWII lately, something I do every few years as an amateur historian. The horrible evils of that war are too numerous to mention, it goes without saying, but from a purely historical point of view, I have lately been coming to the conclusion that Hitler was really a terrible micromanager when it came to war. I understand this view is shared by a lot of historians, but its the sort of conclusion you can come to yourself when you look at the decisions he made..
Now, there was a point, during his rise to power, where he clearly was very good at consolidating his underlings and using his own ability to move crowds to get what he wanted over the long haul. Apparently, he had a tendency to give out completely contradictory or vague orders to underlings, and would leave it to them to work things out. It probably can be said that this worked at least to some effect in the first part of the war, because clearly the Whermacht had a lot of initial success.
Which leads me to wonder if such a leadership style would have any place in a modern business environment; I wonder if any studies have been done on this?
Anyways, he completely fucked up by being a micromanager towards the end of the war in an area he clearly was not an expert in, which was troop movements. For example, had he not micromanaged troop deployments on or around D-Day and left it up to his generals, D-Day probably would not have been a success. He did this repeatedly on the Eastern front, and it's pretty clear that one of the drawbacks of that style of utter top-down leadership style is that yoyu have to know what the fuck you are doing, and he didn't.
And thank God for that, or else the world would have been a different place.
.
Micromanagement occurs when your manager spends more time asking you detailed questions about your project than you spend actually working on the project. Micromanagement occurs when your manager really does not understand technically what you are doing, and thinks that he can look like he does by asking a lot of questions. Micromanagement is telling you how to do your job, not telling you what the goal of your job is.
Micromanagement is not good for the person being "managed", the project, or the company.
It needs to be banished, not praised.
What I hate is a micromanager who tells you to do X and then complains that you did not do Y. Yes, I have experienced this.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I can show even more micromanager failures than the three successful which were listed. A few successful ones does not proof make. Sorry.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
"that to manage people effectively is to delegate, and then get out of the way."
This is a very good lesson to teach when, as in the case of most managers, they have no clue as to the subject at hand. It does not apply when the manager actually DOES have a decent amount of expertise in the field. For example you wouldn't want someone with a background only in management and dentistry to micromanage a group of turbine engineers. However switch that experience in dentistry to schooling/experience in high pressure fluid dynamics and/or mechanical engineering they would possibly have something to contribute via micromanagement.
It's knowing and shaping what your company makes. That's great for a top boss, especially in a consumer products company where the boss should understand the product as well as anybody else. Sure, if you make surgical equipment and lasers and jet engines, the CEO has to delegate that stuff, but a company like Apple? Of course not. Micromanaging would be if Jobs was bugging people about how it was implemented and getting his hands all over the engineering process.
I worked for a company where the CEO was not a tech guy, but he had a vision for the device we were supposed to make. He played with the prototypes constantly and shaped the final device. He knew the market he wanted to go for, and he made his vision happen. He was all over products and marketing and managing customers, but he delegated financial operations and the engineering process to experts. It was a big success, and a great place to work because we all felt like we knew what we were shooting for, and we knew where we fit as part of the overall big picture. We could all imagine what the company would be selling, we knew why it was going to be great, and none of us was surprised when we saw the final result. It was a blast.
A few mergers and acquisitions later and we were part of a big operation. The CEO had no idea what we made or how it worked. In fact, you could go well down the management chain before you found anybody who had any opinion about what the company should be making. The CEO devoted himself to financial engineering and delegated "stuff the company does" to his underlings. We lasted about a year. It's very hard to be inspired by upper management when their "pep talk" is all about financials and nothing about the things your team makes and where they fit in the vision for the company.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
you mean pay the government protection money?
The Nazis financed an expensive weapon, with limited military effectiveness. The V-2 rocket would be the foundation of all future space programs. Von Braun's years of Nazi rocket development experience would make his masterpiece possible: the Saturn V rocket.
So yeah, I think Hitler made bad decisions.
Every manager I've had who's micromanaged me has believed that they were experts in the area. When they really knew what they were talking about, I didn't mind. My first boss was a software developer himself, and he's the guy who basically taught me how to program in the real world. He often did tell me how I should do my job, but since he was an expert on my job, he knew the right way for me to do my job.
I've had other managers who believed that their position in management made them experts on my work, when in fact they knew very little about it. By that time, I was more than competent enough to get a list of requirements and meet them without executive meddling, but I was constantly being told exactly how I should go about what I was doing, and it wasted a tremendous amount of my time.
Point is, both of these people believed that they were providing guidance, but in reality, one of them wasn't. Telling people it's okay to micromanage when they're experts is just going to encourage people validate bad micromanagers who wrongly believe that they're experts.
Micromanagement is every bit as good as open space.
In one sentence it says "Steve Jobs was ... famously involved in designing the glass stairs at the Apple stores. "
And then a sentence or two later it says "One key is that micromanagers must be experts."
So Jobs was an expert on glass staircases?
Yet Another Whiny Slashdot Asshole
All he did is get hipsters to overpay for smart phones and tablets, by making the interface idiot proof.
This is not micromanagement. It's being involved in design reviews.
micromanage the managers, not the people who do the actual work.
Ah, just another insight into the wonderful word of management theory. I wonder if the esteemed people who concern themselves with the knowledge of what it takes to run a successful company will ever just admit to themselves that perhaps this about as useful as trying to understand a winning strategy of casino slots?
Agile is the perfect platform for establishing micromanagement. Break your tasks down into really small pieces, keep daily tabs on progress, make the team responsible for delivering it. They used to call them 'daily progress meetings' when a project had got on the deathmarch and now they just call them 'standups'.
This is just having it both ways. Steve Jobs does the stairs, while Tim Cook does the finances. Is that delegating or micromanagement? To anyone with common sense, it's both.
More common sense, dressed up as management lessons: you need to know what you're doing, and a large business is too big for you to do everything. No kidding, I always wondered why Amazon actually has more than one employee.
How is this any way applicable to a small business? Once it's an empire, the leaders can do whatever they want. A small business doesn't have the luxury to micromanage every little piece of erroneous garbage. The existence of this pervasive obsession with data collection damages our economy and our goals more than any other force by far. If data collection and predictive analysis can only be competently done by the very top, then really what's the point? Unfortunately the predictive analysis is usually spot on. It's already happened with Walmart.
You know what this piece made me think? It made me think that micromanaging wasn't what made these guys successful. No, I'm thinking that it was having good/great people behind them that made them into such successes. In my experience micromanaging needs to have the right leader for the right team to work. If one of those two are wrong then the whole exercise just leads to a bag of shit. A bag of shit for the employees, a bag of shit for the boss, a bag of shit for investors and a bag of shit for corporate.
...Steve Jobs, Mickey Drexler, and Jeff Bezos all ...
Yet another Steve Jobs story masquarading as something more general.
Any details on the other chaps? They're still alive
... out of thousands of succesful business leaders sure is a good way to make a point.
So I've been in the working world for 20 years now. I've worked for a lot of managers/directors/VPs. I can ASSURE you that the micromanagers are IMPOSSIBLE to work for.
Whoever wrote this article is probably an insecure micromanager himself, and is trying to justify his neurotic compulsion to control everything at every level of detail.
Pareto's rule states: There are the critical few and the trivial many.
Jobs exemplified that -- focusing deeply on the critical "does the product have Wow!" and delegating the trivial many problems of Apple to experts, such as how do we actually make the product?
Micromanagement is focus on the trivial many, rather than delegating out those details to those who can do them well enough.
Because I don't know about you but there's nothing better than being nanomanaged by someone who can't even be happy with anything you do especially if it's to the tiniest detail the exact thing they demanded on the 50th revision of the thing they told you to do but endlessly tweaked and corrected.
Yeah that's the shit. That's great. I tell you it's even better when the nanomanager has OCD so they constantly go over and over and over and over and over the same things the same way making an infinitesimal change then changing it back then changing it back again.
But the best I mean the really really best thing of all is when your nanomanager scolds you in public for dragging your heels because that 100th change just wasn't perfect enough or on time.
all workers will be liberated when the last manager is dead
Dying because of woo makes him a failure as a sentient being. All the money and fame can't change that.
IIRC Jobs' cancer was a type with a 5 year expected survival, i.e. 50% of patients die in less than 5 years from diagnosis. He was lucky in that he didn't contract the more common form of pancreatic cancer, which has something brutal like a 1 year expected survival.
He made it longer than 5 years. He actually did better than expected.
I've also read a real cancer doc blogger's posts about Jobs' choices and it sounded like it is very unlikely that his early actions (although somewhat foolish) actually cost him his life. (This would be a blogger whose main purpose in blogging is to fight cancer woo, by the way. His point was that you shouldn't go beyond what the evidence says when rushing to exclaim LOOKIT WOO KILLED PERSON X!!1!!.)