-
Not Synced
What I'm really here to do today
is talk to you about micromanagement
-
Not Synced
and what I learned about micromanagement
by being a micromanager
-
Not Synced
over the last few years of my life.
-
Not Synced
But first off, what is micromanagement?
-
Not Synced
How do we really define it?
-
Not Synced
Well, I posit that it's actually taking
great, wonderful, imaginative people,
-
Not Synced
like all of you,
-
Not Synced
bringing them in into an organization
-
Not Synced
and then crushing their souls
by telling them what font size to use.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
And so in the history of mankind,
-
Not Synced
has anyone every said this?
-
Not Synced
"John, we were never going to close
that deal with Times New Roman,
-
Not Synced
but because you insisted on Helvetiva --
-
Not Synced
bam!
-
Not Synced
Dotted line --
-
Not Synced
millions of dollars start to flow.
-
Not Synced
That was the missing piece!"
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
No one's ever said that, right?
-
Not Synced
There's actually physical manifestations
that we probable see in ourselves
-
Not Synced
by being micromanaged.
-
Not Synced
Think about the most tired
you've ever been in your life, right?
-
Not Synced
It probably wasn't when you stayed
the latest at work,
-
Not Synced
or it wasn't when you
came home from a roadtrip,
-
Not Synced
it was probably when you had someone
looking of your shoulder,
-
Not Synced
watching your each and every move.
-
Not Synced
Kind of like my mother-in-law
when she's over right?
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
I'm like, "I've got this," you kwow?
-
Not Synced
And so there's actually
data to support this.
-
Not Synced
So there was a recent study in the UK
that took 100 hospital employees,
-
Not Synced
put an activity tracker on them
-
Not Synced
and then let them go about
their next 12-hour shift all alone,
-
Not Synced
just a regular 12-hour shift.
-
Not Synced
At the end of the shift,
-
Not Synced
they asked them, "Do you feel fatigued?"
-
Not Synced
and what they found
was actually really interesting.
-
Not Synced
It wasn't necessarily the people
who moved the most
-
Not Synced
that felt the most fatigued,
-
Not Synced
but it was the folks that didn't have
control over their jobs.
-
Not Synced
So we know that micromanagement
isn't really effective --
-
Not Synced
why do we do it?
-
Not Synced
Is it that the definition is wrong?
-
Not Synced
So I posited that micromanagement
is just bringing in great, wonderful,
-
Not Synced
imaginative people
-
Not Synced
and then crush their souls,
-
Not Synced
so is it that we actually want to hire,
deep down inside of us,
-
Not Synced
dull and unimaginative people?
-
Not Synced
I don't know;
-
Not Synced
it's one of those questions your probably
don't even need to ask, right?
-
Not Synced
It's like, do you want to get
your luggage stolen at the airport?
-
Not Synced
Probably not, but I've never
been asked, right?
-
Not Synced
So has anyone asked you,
-
Not Synced
like as a manager,
-
Not Synced
like do you want to hire dull
and unimaginative people?
-
Not Synced
So, I don't know, this is TED,
-
Not Synced
we better back it up with the data,
-
Not Synced
so we actually asked hundreds
of people around the country --
-
Not Synced
hundreds of managers
across the country --
-
Not Synced
do you want to hire dull
and unimaginative people?
-
Not Synced
All right, it's an interesting question.
-
Not Synced
Well, interesting results as well.
-
Not Synced
So, 94% said no.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
We don't want to hire dull
and unimaginative people.
-
Not Synced
Six percent probably didn't
understand the question --
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
but, bless their hearts,
-
Not Synced
maybe they do just want to hire
dull and unimaginative people,
-
Not Synced
but 94 percent said they did not,
-
Not Synced
and so why do we do this still then?
-
Not Synced
Well, I posit that it's something
really, really simple
-
Not Synced
that all of us deep down inside know
and have actually felt.
-
Not Synced
So when we get hired
into an organization --
-
Not Synced
it could be a club,
-
Not Synced
it could be a law firm,
-
Not Synced
it could be a school organization,
-
Not Synced
it could be anything --
-
Not Synced
no one ever jumps to the top
of the totem pole, right?
-
Not Synced
You start at the very bottom.
-
Not Synced
Doing what?
-
Not Synced
Doing work.
-
Not Synced
You actually do the work, rigth?
-
Not Synced
And if you're really good
at doing the work,
-
Not Synced
what do you get rewarded with?
-
Not Synced
More work, right?
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
Yeah, that's right --
-
Not Synced
you guys are all great micromanagers.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
You do more work,
-
Not Synced
and then pretty soon,
-
Not Synced
if you're really good at it,
-
Not Synced
you do a little bit of work still,
-
Not Synced
but actually, you start to manage
people doing the work.
-
Not Synced
And if you're really good at that,
-
Not Synced
what happens after that?
-
Not Synced
You start managing the people
-
Not Synced
who manage the people doing the work,
-
Not Synced
and it's at that point in time,
-
Not Synced
you start to lose control over
the output of your job.
-
Not Synced
I've actually witnessed this firsthand.
-
Not Synced
So, I started a company called
Box in Our Garage,
-
Not Synced
and this was it --
-
Not Synced
I know it doesn't seem like much --
-
Not Synced
you know, there's a pressure
washer in the back --
-
Not Synced
this is "Living the dream,"
-
Not Synced
and my wife was really proud
of me when we started this --
-
Not Synced
or that's what she said,
-
Not Synced
she was really proud of me --
-
Not Synced
and so she would give me a hug,
-
Not Synced
and I'm pretty sure she had her phone up
-
Not Synced
and she was thinking,
-
Not Synced
oh, is John from Harvard still single?
-
Not Synced
Kind of like a lemonade stand
gone wrong in the beginning,
-
Not Synced
but we actually went up and said
mobile commerce is going to be big,
-
Not Synced
and actually consumer packaged goods
were going to change over time,
-
Not Synced
so let's take these big, bulky packs
that you don't want to lug home --
-
Not Synced
so not that two-pack
of Oreo cookies but the 24-pack
-
Not Synced
and not the 24-pack
of toilet paper but the 48-pack,
-
Not Synced
and let's ship it to you much like
a warehouse club would do
-
Not Synced
except it wouldn't ship it to you.
-
Not Synced
So that's what we basically did.
-
Not Synced
And so we had a really slow printer,
-
Not Synced
and what we did was actually said,
-
Not Synced
"OK, this printer is taking forever, man.
-
Not Synced
Let's scribble something that would
delight the customer
-
Not Synced
on the back of these invoices."
-
Not Synced
So we'd say, "Hey,
keep smiling," you know?
-
Not Synced
Or, "Hey, enjoy the Doritos,"
-
Not Synced
or, "We love Gatorade, too."
-
Not Synced
Stuff like that.
-
Not Synced
And so it started breaking up
the monotony of the job as well
-
Not Synced
because I was picking
and packing all of the boxes
-
Not Synced
and that's all you basically do
for eight, nine, 10, 12 hours a day
-
Not Synced
when you're sitting in the garage.
-
Not Synced
And so an interesting thing happened.
-
Not Synced
So we actually started to grow.
-
Not Synced
Over the last --
-
Not Synced
actually just even 36 months after that,
-
Not Synced
we ended up selling hundreds
of millions of dollars worth of stuff,
-
Not Synced
and we actually grew
really, really quickly.
-
Not Synced
But during that time, my role
started to change, too.
-
Not Synced
So, yes, I was the CEO in the garage;
-
Not Synced
I was picking and packing,
-
Not Synced
doing all the work,
-
Not Synced
but then I graduated to actually
managing the people
-
Not Synced
who picked and packed,
-
Not Synced
and then pretty soon I managed the people
-
Not Synced
who managed the people
picking and packing.
-
Not Synced
And even now, I manage to see staff
who manage the departments
-
Not Synced
who manage the people who manage
the people picking and packing,
-
Not Synced
and it is at that point
in time, I lost control.
-
Not Synced
So I thought, OK,
-
Not Synced
we were delighting all of these
customers with these notes, right?
-
Not Synced
They loved them,
-
Not Synced
but I can't write these notes anymore,
-
Not Synced
so you know what I'm going to do?
-
Not Synced
I'm going to tell these folks
how to write these notes,
-
Not Synced
and so --
-
Not Synced
what pen to use, what color to use,
what you should write,
-
Not Synced
what font you should use,
-
Not Synced
"Don't mess up the margins,"
-
Not Synced
this has to be this big,
-
Not Synced
this has to be that big,
-
Not Synced
and pretty soon this goal
of raising morale
-
Not Synced
by breaking up the monotony
in the fulfilment center
-
Not Synced
actually became micromanagement
-
Not Synced
and people started complaining to HR.
-
Not Synced
It's like, "Dude, this CEO guy
has got to get out of my hair, OK?
-
Not Synced
I know how to write a damn note."
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
So it was at that point in time,
-
Not Synced
we said, "OK," you know?
-
Not Synced
We hired these great, wonderful people,
-
Not Synced
let's give them the mission
that's "delight the customer,"
-
Not Synced
let's give them the tool to do so
and that's these notes --
-
Not Synced
have at it.
-
Not Synced
What we found was actually
pretty startling.
-
Not Synced
Some folks actually took the notes
and actually started drawing
-
Not Synced
these really ornate, mini murals on them.
-
Not Synced
When folks ordered diapers,
-
Not Synced
you'd get really fun notes like this:
-
Not Synced
"Say 'Hi' to the baby for us!"
-
Not Synced
and you know, the next size up,
-
Not Synced
if they bought a bigger size,
-
Not Synced
they'd write, "Growing up so fast."
-
Not Synced
And so people really, really took to it.
-
Not Synced
But it was at that time that it also
went off the rails a few times.
-
Not Synced
We has someone just writing,
"Thx, Thx," all the time.
-
Not Synced
It's like, "All right, dude, my boss
used to write that to me,"
-
Not Synced
so, let's not write "Thx" anymore.
-
Not Synced
But you also had interesting things
on the other side:
-
Not Synced
people got a little too creative.
-
Not Synced
And so, like I said before,
we sell everything in bulk:
-
Not Synced
big packs of diapers,
-
Not Synced
big packs of toilet paper,
-
Not Synced
big packs of Doritos and Oreo cookies.
-
Not Synced
We also sell the big packs
of contraception,
-
Not Synced
and so --
-
Not Synced
yeah, this is getting a little hairy.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
So we sell the 40-pack of condoms, right?
-
Not Synced
We're all adults in this room --
-
Not Synced
40-pack of condoms.
-
Not Synced
So, someone ordered
four 40-packs of condoms --
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
And that's all they ordered,
-
Not Synced
so, 160 condroms,
-
Not Synced
the packer was like, "I know
how to delight the customer."
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
"This guy ..."
-
Not Synced
This is what they wrote:
-
Not Synced
[Everyone loves an optimist.]
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
(Applause)
-
Not Synced
We didn't know whether to fire
him or to promote him,
-
Not Synced
but he's still there.
-
Not Synced
So, "everyone loves an optimist,"
-
Not Synced
but here is where it went
a little bit off the rails
-
Not Synced
and I felt a little bit
conflicted in all of this.
-
Not Synced
And --
-
Not Synced
oh, there's a really bad typo --
-
Not Synced
so if there was only a red T-E-D on stage
that I counted on being here --
-
Not Synced
it wouldn't be a typo, right?
-
Not Synced
(Applause)
-
Not Synced
I promised you I had
a really bad sense of humor
-
Not Synced
and now I'm gratifying that.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
So I told you.
-
Not Synced
But I really was conflicted, right?
-
Not Synced
At this point in time,
-
Not Synced
we started doing things
-
Not Synced
that actually weren't part
of our core mission
-
Not Synced
and people started failing at it.
-
Not Synced
And so, I thought,
should we let them fail?
-
Not Synced
Should we continue to let them do this?
-
Not Synced
I don't know --
-
Not Synced
I didn't know at that moment --
-
Not Synced
but I thought this:
-
Not Synced
is failure really that bad?
-
Not Synced
I'm not saying we should
celebrate failure.
-
Not Synced
There's a lot of talk in Silicon Valley
that says, "Let's celebrate failure."
-
Not Synced
No, I don't know if we would
go all the way there,
-
Not Synced
because like, in our board meetings,
-
Not Synced
our board members are never like,
"Hey, Chieh, you failed last quarter,
-
Not Synced
keep doing that, buddy, OK?"
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
No one's ever said that.
-
Not Synced
If you're part of
an organization like that,
-
Not Synced
give me a call,
-
Not Synced
I want to sit in on that meeting.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
In private, I don't think many people
celebrate failure,
-
Not Synced
but actually failure, I posit,
is actually pretty necessary
-
Not Synced
for the folks truly in the long-term,
-
Not Synced
for the smart and imaginative people
truly tring to fulfll the mission
-
Not Synced
that you give them at hand.
-
Not Synced
And so failure can actually
be seen as a milestone
-
Not Synced
along that mission towards success.
-
Not Synced
The downside of not micromanaging
is potentially this percieved notion
-
Not Synced
that you might fail more often,
-
Not Synced
and if it's really not that bad,
-
Not Synced
what is the upside?
-
Not Synced
Well, we saw the upside
and it's pretty great.
-
Not Synced
So we tasked our engineers and said,
-
Not Synced
"Hey, some of our fulfilment centers
cost millions of dollars to build,
-
Not Synced
there's miles and miles of conveyor,
-
Not Synced
and so, can you do the same thing,
-
Not Synced
can you make them efficient
without spending millions of dollars?"
-
Not Synced
So, they got to work:
-
Not Synced
they actually did this --
-
Not Synced
this is not photoshopped,
-
Not Synced
the guy is really grinding.
-
Not Synced
They built an autonomous, guided vehicle.
-
Not Synced
We didn't tell them what to build,
-
Not Synced
what format it needed to be.
-
Not Synced
In 90 days they produced
the first prototype:
-
Not Synced
powered off Tesla batteries,
-
Not Synced
stereoscopic cameras,
-
Not Synced
lydar systems.
-
Not Synced
It basically replicates the efficiency
of a conveyor belt
-
Not Synced
without the actual cap x
of a conveyor belt.
-
Not Synced
So it doesn't actually
just stop with engineers.
-
Not Synced
Our marketing department --
-
Not Synced
we told them, "Hey, get the word out,
do the right thing."
-
Not Synced
So we have this wonderful lady
-
Not Synced
by the name of Natasha
on the marketing team.
-
Not Synced
She stopped me, she's like, "Chieh,
what are we doing about the pink tax?"
-
Not Synced
I went and got my coffee,
-
Not Synced
I sat down and I said, "OK, Natasha
what is this pink tax?"
-
Not Synced
And so she told me it's really intersting.
-
Not Synced
So, some of you might know that actually
in 32 states across America,
-
Not Synced
we actually charge a luxury goods tax
on women's products
-
Not Synced
like feminine care products,
-
Not Synced
so tampons and pads are taxed
like luxury-goods items.
-
Not Synced
So I would never call my wife --
-
Not Synced
or if she called me and said, "Hey, hon,
bring some pads on the way home,"
-
Not Synced
and I said, "Babe, you know, there's
a trade war going on,
-
Not Synced
the economy's not that good,
-
Not Synced
so no lunxury goods this month
but next month I promise -- "
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
"You know, I"ll take a look at it."
-
Not Synced
I'd be single pretty quickly, right?
-
Not Synced
But what's super interesting is now --
-
Not Synced
we didn't tell them what to do --
-
Not Synced
but now, working with finance,
the rebate the taxes
-
Not Synced
back to customers all across the country
that we unfairly have to collect.
-
Not Synced
And so at this point in time,
you might be thinking,
-
Not Synced
"OK, what is the real, real upside
of not micromanaging?"
-
Not Synced
and it's this:
-
Not Synced
I didn't do any of these projects.
-
Not Synced
I didn't make the [AGV];
-
Not Synced
I didn't rethink the pink tax campaign.
-
Not Synced
I didn't do any of this,
-
Not Synced
but I'm standing here on a TED stage
taking all the credit for it.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
"This guy does nothing
and takes all the credit for it.
-
Not Synced
He's a real CEO this guy.
-
Not Synced
He's really got it down."
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
But the reality is this.
-
Not Synced
I don't have the CEO thing down
100 percent pat,
-
Not Synced
but I've actually learned the most
fundamentally challenging lesson
-
Not Synced
I've ever had to learn,
-
Not Synced
and that's this.
-
Not Synced
There is only one solution
to micromanagment.
-
Not Synced
And that's to trust.
-
Not Synced
Thank you.
-
Not Synced
(Applause)