Micromanagement

Micromanaging usually gets a bad rap, for good reason, but there’s one area where it definitely has utility: building great products.

There are many examples of where this is the case:

1. Steve Jobs and the first iterations of Apple’s products (the most innovative of the bunch). Jobs famously micromanaged the design and development of many of Apple’s products, from the shade of white that was used to the choosing of the material that would be used to build Apple’s physical stores.
2. Jerry Seinfeld and Seinfeld. “The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life.”
3. Jiro Ono and Sukiyabashi Jiro. Being an omakase chef means delivering incredible product day in and day out, from the choosing of the fish, to the temperature of the rice, and presentation to the customer. Ono spent years training and supervising his staff on how to cook rice before he would let them touch fish.

There’s no denying that these three individuals built great products and were serial micromanagers. Now, was it necessary for them to micromanage? Conversely, would they have been able to build such great products if they didn’t?

I think it’s unlikely. Because to build great things, you need to have a bold vision, which requires that you believe in a future no one else does. This is usually very difficult to share with others because it’s often not explicitly obvious or clear to even the visionary themselves. It’s something that arises from their own sensibilities, which others often will disagree with. Practically, it means that without the visionary micromanaging, it’s more likely than not that the end product won’t reach its potential, which drastically reduces the chance that it’ll be great.