-
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!
-
(Laughter)
-
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 of 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 the 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?
-
All right, 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?
-
(Laughter)
-
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 to see 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, mini murals 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.
-
We had someone just writing,
"Thx, Thx," all the time,
-
and it's like, "All right, 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 --
-
yeah, 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 condroms,
-
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)
-
(Laughter)
-
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 actually 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
by the name of Natasha
-
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, Natasha,
what is this pink tax?"
-
And so she told me it's really intersting.
-
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 lunxury goods this month
but next month I promise -- "
-
(Laughter)
-
"You know, 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)