Confessions of a recovering micromanager

Think about the most tired you've ever been at work. It probably wasn't when you stayed late or came home from a road trip -- chances are it was when you had someone looking over your shoulder, watching your each and every move. "If we know that micromanagement isn't really effective, why do we do it?" asks entrepreneur Chieh Huang. In a funny talk packed with wisdom and humility, Huang shares the cure for micromanagement madness -- and how to foster innovation and happiness at work.

What I'm really here to do today
is talk to you about micromanagement

and what I learned about micromanagement

by being a micromanager
over the last few years of my life.

But first off, what is micromanagement?

How do we really define it?

Well, I posit that it's actually taking
great, wonderful, imaginative people --

like all of you --

bringing them in into an organization

and then crushing their souls --

(Laughter)

by telling them what font size to use.

In the history of mankind,

has anyone ever said this?

"John, we were never going to close
that deal with Times New Roman,

but because you insisted on Helvetica --

bam!

Dotted line --

millions of dollars started to flow.

That was the missing piece!"

No one's ever said that, right?

There's actually physical manifestations
that we probably see in ourselves

by being micromanaged.

Think about the most tired
you've ever been in your life, right?

It probably wasn't when
you stayed the latest at work,

or it wasn't when you
came home from a road trip,

it was probably when you had someone
looking over your shoulder,

watching your each and every move.

Kind of like my mother-in-law
when she's over right?

(Laughter)

I'm like, "I got this," you know?

And so there's actually
data to support this.

There was a recent study in the UK.

They took 100 hospital employees,

put an activity tracker on them

and then let them go about
their next 12-hour shift all alone,

just a regular 12-hour shift.

At the end of the shift,
they asked them, "Do you feel fatigued?"

And what they found
was actually really interesting.

It wasn't necessarily
the people who moved the most

that felt the most fatigued,

but it was the folks
that didn't have control over their jobs.

So if we know that micromanagement
isn't really effective,

why do we do it?

Is it that the definition is wrong?

I posited that micromanagement

is just bringing in great,
wonderful, imaginative people

and then crushing their souls,

so is it that we actually want to hire --

deep down inside of us --

dull and unimaginative people?

It's one of those questions
you probably don't even need to ask.

It's like, "Do you want to get
your luggage stolen at the airport?"

Probably not, but I've never
been asked, right?

So has anyone asked you, as a manager,

"Do you want to hire
dull and unimaginative people?"

So, I don't know, this is TED,
we better back it up with data.

We actually asked hundreds
of people around the country --

hundreds of managers across the country --

do you want to hire
dull and unimaginative people?

Alright, it's an interesting question.

Well, interesting results as well.

So, 94% said no --

(Laughter)

we don't want to hire
dull and unimaginative people.

Six percent probably didn't
understand the question --

(Laughter)

but, bless their hearts,

maybe they do just want to hire
dull and unimaginative people.

But 94 percent said they did not,
and so why do we do this still then?

Well, I posit that it's something
really, really simple

that all of us deep down inside know
and have actually felt.

So when we get hired
into an organization --

it could be a club,
it could be a law firm,

it could be a school organization,
it could be anything --

no one ever jumps to the top
of the totem pole, right?

You start at the very bottom.

Doing what?

Doing work.

You actually do the work, right?

And if you're really good
at doing the work,

what do you get rewarded with?

More work, right?

Yeah, that's right, you guys
are all great micromanagers.

(Laughter)

You do more work,

and then pretty soon,
if you're really good at it,

you do a little bit of work still,

but actually, you start to manage
people doing the work.

And if you're really good at that,
what happens after that?

You start managing the people
who manage the people doing the work,

and it's at that point in time,

you start to lose control
over the output of your job.

I've actually witnessed this firsthand.

So, I started a company
called Boxed in our garage,

and this was it --
I know it doesn't seem like much --

you know, there's a pressure
washer in the back --

this is "living the dream."

And my wife was really proud of me
when we started this,

or that's what she said,
she was really proud of me --

and so she would give me a hug,
and I'm pretty sure she had her phone up

and she was thinking,
"Oh, is John from Harvard still single?"

It was kind of like a lemonade stand
gone wrong in the beginning,

but we actually went up and said
mobile commerce is going to be big,

and actually consumer packaged goods
were going to change over time,

so let's take these big, bulky packs
that you don't want to lug home --

so not the two-pack
of Oreo cookies but the 24-pack

and not the 24-pack
of toilet paper but the 48-pack --

and let's ship it to you
much like a warehouse club would do

except they wouldn't ship it to you.

So that's what we basically did.

We had a really slow printer

and what we did was actually say,
"OK, this printer is taking forever, man.

Let's scribble something
that would delight the customer

on the back of these invoices."

So we'd say, "Hey,
keep smiling," you know?

"Hey, you're awesome,"

or, "Hey, enjoy the Doritos,"

or, "We love Gatorade, too."

Stuff like that.

And so it started breaking up
the monotony of the job as well

because I was picking
and packing all of the boxes,

and that's all you basically do
for eight, nine, 10, 12 hours a day

when you're sitting in the garage.

And so an interesting thing happened.

So we actually started to grow.

And so, you know, over the last --

actually just even 36 months after that,

we ended up selling hundreds
of millions of dollars worth of stuff,

and we actually grew
really, really quickly.

But during that time,
my role started to change, too.

So, yes, I was the CEO in the garage;

I was picking and packing,
doing all the work,

but then I graduated

to actually managing the people
who picked and packed,

and then pretty soon I managed the people

who managed the people
picking and packing.

And even now, I manage the C-staff
who manage the departments

who manage the people who manage
the people picking and packing.

And it is at that point
in time, I lost control.

So I thought, OK, we were delighting
all of these customers with these notes.

They loved them, but I can't
write these notes anymore,

so you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to tell these folks
how to write these notes.

What pen to use, what color to use,
what you should write,

what font you should use,

don't mess up the margins,

this has to be this big,
this has to be that big.

And pretty soon this goal
of raising morale

by breaking up the monotony
in the fulfillment center

actually became micromanagement,
and people started complaining to HR.

It's like, "Dude, this CEO guy
has got to get out of my hair, OK?

I know how to write a damn note."

(Laughter)

So it was at that point in time,
we said, "OK, you know?

We hired these great, wonderful people,

let's give them the mission
that's 'delight the customer,'

let's give them the tool to do so,
and that's these notes -- have at it."

And so what we found
was actually pretty startling.

Some folks actually took the notes

and actually started drawing
these really ornate minimurals on them.

When folks ordered diapers,
you'd get really fun notes like this:

"Say 'hi' to the baby for us!"

And you know, the next size up,
if they bought a bigger size,

they'd write, "Growing up so fast."

And so people really, really took to it.

But it was at that time that it also
went off the rails a few times.

And so we had someone just writing,
"Thx, thx," all the time,

and it's like, "Alright, dude,
my boss used to write that to me,"

so, let's not write "Thx" anymore.

But you also had interesting
things on the other side.

People got a little too creative.

And so, like I said before,
we sell everything in bulk:

the big packs of diapers,
big packs of toilet paper,

the big packs of Doritos and Oreo cookies.

We also sell the big packs
of contraception,

and so --

this is getting a little hairy.

(Laughter)

So we sell the 40-pack of condoms, right?

We're all adults in this room --
40-pack of condoms.

So, someone ordered
four 40-packs of condoms --

(Laughter)

And that's all they ordered,

so, 160 condoms,

the packer was like,
"I know how to delight the customer."

(Laughter)

"This guy ..."

This is what they wrote:

[Everyone loves an optimist]

(Laughter)

(Applause)

We didn't know whether to fire him
or to promote him, but he's still there.

So, "Everyone loves an optimist."

But here is where it went
a little bit off the rails

and I felt a little bit
conflicted in all of this.

And --

oh, there's a really bad typo --

so if there was only a red T-E-D on stage
that I counted on being here,

it wouldn't be a typo, right?

(Laughter)

(Applause)

I promised you I had
a really bad sense of humor,

and now I'm gratifying that.

So I told you. But I really
was conflicted, right?

At this point in time,
we started doing things

that actually weren't part
of our core mission

and people started failing at it.

And so, I thought,
should we let them fail?

Should we continue to let them do this?

I don't know --

I didn't know at that moment,

but I thought this:

Is failure really that bad?

I'm not saying
we should celebrate failure.

There's a lot of talk in Silicon Valley
that says, "Let's celebrate failure."

No, I don't know
if we would go all the way there,

because like, in our board meetings,

our board members are never like,
"Hey, Chieh, you failed last quarter,

keep doing that, buddy, OK?"

No one's ever said that.

If you're part of
an organization like that,

give me a call, I want
to sit in on that meeting.

In private, I don't think
many people celebrate failure,

but failure, I posit,
is actually pretty necessary

for the folks truly in the long-term,

for the smart and imaginative people

truly trying to fulfill the mission
that you give them at hand.

And so failure can actually
be seen as a milestone

along that mission towards success.

And if the downside of not micromanaging

is potentially this perceived notion
that you might fail more often,

and if it's really not that bad,

what is the upside?

Well, we saw the upside
and it's pretty great.

We tasked our engineers and said,

"Hey, some of our fulfillment centers
cost millions of dollars to build,

there's miles and miles of conveyor,

and so, can you do the same thing,

can you make them efficient
without spending millions of dollars?"

So, they got to work:

they actually did this --
this is not photoshopped,

the guy is really grinding.

They built an autonomous guided vehicle.

We didn't tell them what to build,
what format it needed to be.

In 90 days they produced
the first prototype:

powered off Tesla batteries,
stereoscopic cameras, lidar systems.

It basically replicates
the efficiency of a conveyor belt

without the actual capex
of a conveyor belt.

So it doesn't actually
just stop with engineers.

Our marketing department --

we told them, "Hey,
get the word out; do the right thing."

We have this wonderful lady, Nitasha,
on the marketing team.

She stopped me in the morning,

she's like, "Chieh, what are
we doing about the pink tax?"

I went and got my coffee, I sat down,

I said, "OK, Nitasha,
what is this pink tax?"

And so she told me,
it's really interesting.

So, some of you might know
that in 32 states across America,

we actually charge a luxury goods tax
on women's products

like feminine care products,

so tampons and pads
are taxed like luxury goods items.

So I would never dare call my wife --

or if she called me and said, "Hey, hon,
bring some pads on the way home,"

and I said, "Babe, you know,
there's a trade war going on,

the economy's not that good,

so no luxury goods this month
but next month I promise --

(Laughter)

I'll take a look at it."

I'd be single pretty quickly, right?

But what's super interesting is now --

we didn't tell them what to do --

but now, working with finance,
they rebate the tax

back to customers all around the country
that we unfairly have to collect.

And so at this point in time,
you might be thinking,

"OK, what is the real, real upside
of not micromanaging?"

and it's this:

I didn't do any of these projects.

I didn't make the AGV.

I didn't do the "Rethink
the Pink Tax" campaign.

I didn't do any of this,

but I'm standing here on a TED stage
taking all the credit for it.

(Laughter)

"This guy does nothing
and takes all the credit for it.

He's a real CEO, this guy.
He's really got it down."

(Laughter)

But the reality is this.

I don't have the CEO thing down
100 percent pat,

but I've actually learned
the most fundamentally challenging lesson

I've ever had to learn,

and that's this.

There is only one solution
to micromanagement ...

and that's to trust.

Thank you.

(Applause)