As a manager or supervisor have you ever heard or said any of the following?:
"He's my best employee because he never bothers me with anything. He just does his job."
"She's the best employee I have because I never have to talk to her about anything. She just knows what needs to get done."
"I don't know how he does it. But I wish everyone could work the system like he does."
"I'm not really sure what she does. But it must be right because I never hear any complaints."
Sadly this is how many managers feel, especially in "office" or so-called "professional" environments. And as a result it is not uncommon for our firm to see productivity levels range anywhere from 20% down to 10% or less. And believe it or not the more "professional" the staff, the lower the productivity.
How can this be?
We believe the answer lies with the notion shared by many managers that "professional" or "office" people don't need to be "micromanaged." For some reason it is considered perfectly acceptable to tell a worker on an assembly line that they need to produce "x" units per hour. But when it comes to how long it shoud take to create a Purchase Requisition - anything goes.
Before I go any further talking about the office example let's examine what happens in a factory when a supervisor sets a target for an employee of 10 units per hour. Let's suppose the conversation would go something like this...
Supervisor: "Hi Mary, I just want to make sure you have a copy of today's schedule."
Mary: "I sure do. It's right here posted on my board."
Supervisor: "That's great. Do you have everything you need to complete 10 units per hour like it says?"
Mary: "I think so. But I'm going to run out of labels in a couple of hours so you might want to send some over. No rush."
Supervisor: "No problem. I'll take care of it. See you in a couple of hours."
Sounds simple enough. Not too many people would complain about the fact that the employee is being micromanaged. But consider carefully what happened. Or more importantly what didn't happen.
First of all the supervisor confirmed that his employee knew exactly what she needed to do. It wasn't left up to chance or her own "judgment" what hat to get done. She didn't come in and start prioritizing her day on her own with no guidance from management. As a result the supervisor knew for sure that this particular employee was going to spend the next few hours doing exactly what the company needed her to do.
Second of all the supervisor confirmed that she knew how long it should take to do the particular tasks. Presumably at some point during the R&D stage of this product's life-cycle some very smart engineers, designers and marketers had gotten together to figure out exactly how much labour should go into each product. And no doubt some very fancy spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations had been used to ultimately get approval from Senior Management to "go to market" with this item with the promise of an acceptable return on investment for the company and its shareholders. By confirming that Mary knew exactly how long it should take her to make each unit the supervisor was confirming that the labour component for this product would meet the parameters originally used to get Senior Management approval to launch. Again, makes perfect sense.
Third of all the supervisor confirmed that Mary had everything she needed to create the 10 units per hour. And guess what, Mary informed her micromanaging boss that she was ok for a couple of hours but then she would run out of labels. "So what" you say?
So think about what would happen if this conversation had never taken place. Assuming Mary knew how to read her schedule she would have started producing units at a rate of 10 per hour. But two hours later she would have to stop because she would have run out of labels. Of course the cost of her labour would not stop, just her output.
At this point she would have to call for someone to get her more labels. Or if she was a "good employee" she would likely know where the extra labels were kept and she would go and get some for herself. Either way she would stop creating units at a rate of 10 per hour and the company would stop making the required amount of money for the units. Not because Mary was too slow. But because the process around her had failed. By finding out this information ahead of time the supervisor now has two hours to make sure that Mary gets the labels she needs before she has to stop working and go through the aggravation and frustration of finding more.
Let's take this example one step further. Let's pretend the supervisor came by Mary's work station two hours later to do some more Micromanaging. Suppose the conversation went something like this...
Supervisor: "Hi Mary. Just checking to see how you are doing. According to the schedule we talked about you should have 20 units put together by now. How did you do?"
Mary: "Hi there. Well I would have made 20 no problem but this press has started to act up. It feels like something is coming loose. As a result I only have 15 finished so far."
Supervisor: "hmmm, that's not good. We'll never finish the schedule at this rate. I'm going to get Maintenance over here to have a look at that. In the mean time why don't you switch to this afternoon's schedule. Do you have everything you need to do that?"
Mary: "Let me have a look. Yes I think I can get started on that job for a while at least if that's what you want me to do."
Supervisor: "Well it's not ideal but at least we'll keep you working while they figure out what's wrong with your press. Thanks for letting me know."
Mary: "Anytime. Thanks for your help. See you in a couple of hours."
Now let's think about what just happened, or more importantly didn't happen. First of all without having to stand next to Mary for the entire two hours the supervisor knew immediately that something had gone wrong with her process because she had been unable to meet the standard they had both agreed on at the start of her shift.
Second of all the supervisor found out about the problem just two hours into the day which left plenty of time to make adjustments to the schedule on the fly and keep Mary productive.
What did not happen was the supervisor finding out at the end of the day that the work was not completed. Even if Mary had a valid "excuse" about her equipment not working properly it would still be too late to fix anything. The result might have been a short order, missed shipment, additional overtime, upset customer or worse. But it wasn't all because the supervisor micromanaged his employee.
In this example the three key components to effective micromanaging were the following:
1) Proper standards for completing a task
2) A daily Schedule to clearly communicate what needed to be done
3) Timely follow-up by the supervisor on Schedule Attainment
Next we'll consider a similar scenario in an office environment.
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