Lions, Tigers and Micromanagement! Oh My!

One of the standard questions during job interviews for management positions is, "what kind of manager are you?" I don't know of too many people who answer, "Oh, I'm into micromanagement." I know that those words have certainly never passed my lips. However, after reading the thought provoking post by Ben Horowitz (in Marc Andreesons excellent blog), I may actually have to say "it depends."

Mr. Horowitz recommends two different times when micromanagement is critical for the success of any executive. The first is related to Andy Grove's idea of "Task Relevant Maturity." "Andy explains that employees who are immature in a given task require detailed training and instruction. They need to be micromanaged. On the other hand, if an employee is relatively mature in a task, then it is counterproductive and annoying to manage the details of their work."

Most of us would agree that the sink or swim method is not the best way to learn how to swim, but it is often the way that we give out new assignments or train new employees. In addition, my best bosses were those that managed the transition from micromanagement to freedom the best.

The second time for micromanagement is to help overcome weaknesses. As Mr. Horowitz states, "Almost nobody is brilliant at everything. When hiring and when firing executives, you must therefore focus on strength rather than lack of weakness. Everybody has severe weaknesses even if you can’t see them yet. When managing, it’s often useful to micromanage and to provide remedial training around these weaknesses. Doing so may make the difference between an executive succeeding or failing."

The costs of making a wrong hire are pretty steep in lost productivity, salary, training dollars and time. But because of two management failures most part people are fired for their weaknesses and not their strengths. Failure One - not understanding the strengths and weaknesses of their employees and then actively (often intensively) working to overcome the employees weakness. Failure Two - management not accepting accept responsibility for Failure One, blaming and then firing the employee for the weaknesses that management didn't work on overcoming. Oh my!