The Art of Micromanaging
Today I want to talk about something that comes up very often when I coach founders and CEOs.
Micromanagement.
The reason it comes up so often is very simple: You know you’re not supposed to do it. But there are many situations in your day to day where it seems like the only reasonable thing to do. Especially during the early scaling stages.
And here is the deal: sometimes you really should micromanage. Building and managing a company isn’t a clean thing - you don’t have the luxury of saying no to all micromanaging. Everything is a tradeoff, and some decisions are simply about doing the least harmful thing in a difficult situation.
“Don’t micromanage”, therefore, is a useless piece of advice.
But when is it ok to micromanage? If you do it in the wrong situation, the cost can be very high. If you do it at the right time, you can save a lot of trouble and achieve key outcomes. Not doing it when it’s necessary can be a grave mistake.
It really is an art. But there is also some science to it.
What is micromanaging?
Let’s start with the definition. Just knowing if what you’re doing actually qualifies as micromanaging can be confusing, because some of the things you NEED to be doing in your leadership role may seem/feel like micromanaging, and other people may claim that it is micromanaging, when in fact it is not.
To help you navigate this I’ve made a map of the different levels of operations at which micromanaging may, or may seem to, occur. Identifying where you are on the general landscape will help you make better decisions in the specific situations where micromanaging seems like the right thing to do.
1. The goal metric level
As a founder or CEO, your job is to set goals for the organisation. You do not need to worry about micromanagement in relation to this, because it is YOUR responsibility to set the goals. I don’t mean this in the sense that you have to do all the aspects of goal setting, but in the sense that you have the final word on which goals are set.
When you are doing this, you are operating on what I call the “goal metric level” and although you will benefit from involving your team in this process, this is your territory and your call. Exercising your goal setting mandate is NOT micromanaging.
However, if you don’t do your job well at this level, you open yourself up to unnecessary micromanagement risks down the line. This happens when you fail to set and/or communicate clear and measurable goals.
The communication part is just as important as the goal setting part. Micromanaging is about controlling outcomes, and if you haven’t communicated what the expected outcomes are, it is very unlikely that your team will produce those outcomes, and then you’ll feel a need to step in.
So start by setting goals. For example: "Increase subscription revenue growth". Keep it simple, clear, and focused. It is a metric but it is mostly a signal of what is important. Make sure the message is received and that you all understand each other.
2-3. The measurement and lever levels
Below the goal metric level is the measurement level. Every good metric has “component driver parts” that form an equation. These things, and only these things, will make the metric move. You need to know these.
For our example of revenue growth (for SaaS) the component driver parts are: New $ (+) Expansion $ (-) Contraction $ (-) Churn $. It is only these things that can affect the metric. If these things do not change, the metric cannot change.
There are several good exercises you can use to break down a goal into its component driver parts, and I might write a newsletter about that at some point. For now, just google MECE and you’ll find some useful stuff.
Not all component driver parts are possible or desirable to move, and the ones that are (levers), often represent different size opportunities. The ones that really matter are commonly called “key drivers”. Usually, the Pareto principle (80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes) applies.
As a founder or CEO, you should feel comfortable saying which driver(s) the organization should focus on at a given time. This is not micromanagement! It’s about strategic decision making based in the Pareto distribution and your company’s strengths, weaknesses and resources. In other words, it’s a core part of your job and responsibility.
In our example, we make and communicate the following decision: "Let's focus on Increasing New $".
I happen to believe in “showing the thinking” behind decisions like these. This helps with sanity checking, competence and perspective utilization, and buy in. It does take time and energy - although not that much, since you have to document the “breaking down into component parts” process anyway.
You will have to decide if that investment makes sense for you in your present situation. Just remember that the final call is yours. You can’t blame anyone else if afterwards it is discovered that your organization had the wrong focus. So just lead! It’s not micromanagement.
4. The intervention level
Now, however, we are really entering potential micromanagement territory. I call this the “intervention level” and it’s where the most annoying, demotivating and shortsighted micromanagement tends to take place.
As a rule of thumb, this level is not your turf. You are a guest here. You CAN technically still make decisions here of course. But it will be perceived as “power moves”. And rightly so.
This level belongs to the person responsible for moving the metric. Your job is to support them in this, and to set them up for success.
They should come up with interventions/experiments that they believe will move the metric, and you should let them. This is why they are here. If you’ve hired right, they are much better than you at coming up with smart experiments in this area. Even if they are still growing as individual contributors, and even if you have overlapping expertise, as a CEO or founder, you will need to learn how to let go. (The previous two newsletters - covering leadership foundations, scaling and trust - talk about why in more detail.)
Micromanagement happens when you get involved in telling people HOW to run experiments or telling people WHICH experiments to run.
The costs of micromanaging these things are many. It’s demotivating for the people who should be the ones coming up with and executing experiments. It’s underutilizing their skills and experiences - which is a waste of company resources. It means you don’t get full buy-in from your team. It means you undermine these leaders in front of their team. It means you are sitting blocked at your current scale as a team. You cannot scale further while you are spending all your time and energy getting involved in this level of detail.
But! Make sure you understand their "change theory" in detail. Why do they think the proposed experiment will move the metric? Getting absolute clarity on why they think something will move a metric is NOT micromanagement. You are fully in your right to ask A LOT of questions. Just stay aware of the fact that if the answers are unsatisfying, it might be because YOU can’t see it. You might be suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. I’ve fallen into this trap on occasion. Luckily I’ve been privileged to work with leaders who tell me when I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s a humbling experience, but absolutely key for you to grow as a leader. Welcome it!
5. The impact level
This is the level where outcomes are produced. This is where the intervention will either have an impact or not. This is where the components of the metric moves, or not.
It's important to know, however, that this doesn’t mean that the change that happens here should be measured here. Nor should it be measured at the intervention level. It skips over the intervention level, and is picked up at (the aptly named) “measurement level”. This is because, you will rarely know if or why an experiment failed. You will just know that the metric didn't move. So: Did New $ increase? That’s the right question to ask.
Let's say New $ didn't increase. How do you talk about that? How do you hold people accountable, and WHEN do you have those discussions?
This has two steps. First, you need to check that the person responsible actually ran the experiment. Did they carry out the actions in their change theory? If not, why? Holding people accountable to actually running the experiments they have agreed to run, or getting to the bottom of why the experiment isn't running, is not micromanagement.
Second, if they did run the experiment and the metric didn’t move, are they changing experiment, or are they spinning down a rabbit hole? Holding people accountable for stopping an experiment if it DID run AND the metric DIDN’T move is not micromanagement.
Micromanagement on this level happens when you draw conclusions about the impact based on how people run experiments. It happens when you look at how they are doing their job, conclude that they don’t do it well, and intervene while the experiment is ongoing. You are NOT intervening because you did a proper following up, after a reasonable amount of time, to see if the metric moved, you are doing it based on your view of how the job should be done.
Sometimes you are right, sometimes you are wrong. Regardless, it is micromanagement. And the consequence is that you are stealing their success and failure from them. You are interrupting the process of success and failure. You are not letting it land in a clear outcome.
Yes, there are benefits from interrupting failure. But there are also benefits to a team experiencing the sobering clarity of failure.
Yes, there are benefits from speeding up success. But there are also benefits to a team gaining confidence and motivation by having a slower success be theirs.
Micromanagement is, in this sense, a kind of theft. It’s about stealing peoples experiences of failure and success. It always carries the cost of that act.
So when should you micromanage?
You should micromanage only after you have considered the above risks. And that’s not how most people micromanage. Most people micromanage out of pure emotional reaction. Most micromanagers are not only unaware of their behaviour, they are even in denial.
Micromanagement should be a clearheaded decision. That’s the secret.
You need to look at the costs, as per above, and you need to weigh them against the benefit, or against the costs of not intervening. What do you get and what do you have to pay to get it? When will you incur the costs? And when will you reap the rewards? Does this balance into something that makes sense for you and the organisation at this time? Are you willing to build up micromanagement debt, and how much of it?
You should also be very transparent about your micromanaging. Say: “I am aware I am micromanaging this right now. Let’s debrief about it after”.
Do the debrief. Hold yourself accountable. Own your decision to micromanage. Show the thinking behind your decision to the person involved. Apologize if you realize you’ve made a mistake.
Doing this will reduce the risk of reactive behaviour on your part in the future, and it will increase trust between you and the people you occasionally micromanage.
Accountability and improved outcomes is about committing as a team to that learning process and to keep experimenting. It's about not repeating the same things and expecting a different result. And that includes you, just like it includes everyone else.
Hope this helps, and good luck micromanaging!