Micromanaging in a Crisis (or not)

Source: CrystalLinks.com

I came across a very useful perspective on micromanagement during a time of crisis this week. Jeff Hyman is an adjunct lecturer of innovation & entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management. Hyman serves as the chief talent officer of the firm Recruit Rockstars Executive Search. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of a weight-management firm, Retrofit, that he also founded. Hyman explains his perspective on when to zoom in and when to step back in this brief excerpt of an article posted on the Kellogg Insight website. 

During this extraordinary time, there will be functions critical to the business that you will have to micromanage because, without your attention, there might not be a business to lead. At the same time, there are going to be some functions that you absolutely need to trust your team to execute on their own.

For example, under regular circumstances, a CEO would not spend time thinking about cash collections or accounts receivable. They have a CFO whose team handles that function. But if, say, half your revenue vanishes overnight, or your early stage company is not yet profitable, or the venture capital deal you had lined up falls through, cashflow takes on a new urgency.  So, micromanaging might include working with your accounts-receivable team to determine whether to negotiate creative, flexible deals that still keep cash flowing into your business, especially at a time when many of your suppliers may want to wait on paying you. “Cash is the oxygen of your business,” Hyman says. “If you’ve only got six- or three-months’ cash on hand, you may need to be way in the weeds on cash collections if your company is going to live to fight another day. You may require daily reviews with your accounts-receivable team to understand when you can expect payments from customers.” 

Just as you will have new roll-up-your-sleeves tasks, other projects may not demand much of your attention at all. That product that you had intended to launch next year, and on which you still want to keep moving forward, can be delegated to trusted team members.

“It’s very tempting in times of uncertainty to find this false sense of certainty by trying to micromanage everything,” Hyman says. “But you can’t micromanage virtual teams. So you have to trust that you’ve hired well. They may get things done almost the way that you would have done it. You have to be okay with that. It’s much more important right now to get the few things right and get them right enough versus getting them perfect.” Be clear with your team about who has responsibility for these new projects, as well as on how (or if) you would like to be involved in any decisions.  “You can let them know, ‘I’m letting you run it. Keep me posted. Let me know what you need from me,’” he says.