The Micromanager Bronwyn Fryer, Jim Goodnight, Mark Goulston, J. Michael Lawrie, and

Craig Chappelow. Harvard Business Review, Sept. 2004

George Latour bends over backward to coach his marketing director, but she considers his management style oppressive. Can they find a way to cooperate?

NINE-YEAR-OLD JILL slammed her pencil down on the table in frustration.

"I hate word problems!"

She clearly was tired and hungry. It had been an exhausting day and not just for fourth graders. George Latour's wife was visiting her mother, leaving him to manage both his children and his company. George prided himself on being a good father and a good corporate paterfamilias, but his wife's rare absences always renewed his appreciation of her stamina and general serenity.

"It's like the last one, Jilly," George said, trying to hide his impatience as Jill slumped dramatically over her workbook. He spooned some meatballs and spaghetti onto the dinner plates. "First you have to come up with the fraction. So now, tell me what the numerator would be."

He turned to see three-year-old Bobby starting to tip a full milk carton toward his glass.

"Ooops!" George snatched the teetering carton from his son before it could fall forward.

"I can pour it!" Bobby shouted.

"Trust me. It's too heavy." George filled a small plastic cup with milk and placed it on the table. He gently pushed Jill's work aside and put her plate in front of her. "Here, honey. Eat your dinner and then you can finish up the homework."

George asked his children how their days had gone. Jill was proud of a good grade on her spelling test. Bobby had drawn a picture of a scary spider.

"And how was your day, Daddy?" Jill asked brightly, chasing an escaped strand of spaghetti.

"Fine, thank you, Jilly," said George, pleased by her polite interest.

To be perfectly honest, the day had been anything but fine. The board members had been testy at the rooming meeting, where George had spent an inordinate amount of time defending the company's sales strategy. Everyone in the room knew that Retronics needed a boost, and he had felt the heat.

As CEO, George's mandate was to grow revenues with an eye toward taking the software-engineering firm public by 2006. Retronics had been a Silicon Valley darling during the 1990s, enjoying generous venture capital funding and boasting a long list of big-name clients. When the dot-com bubble burst, Retronics had suffered. First came the layoffs and cutbacks; then the board fired the founder. In 2003, the directors hired George, who was a seasoned executive with impressive engineering credentials and significant experience in enterprise-scale systems and operations. He had brought in some important new business. But 16 months later, revenues hadn't rebounded enough to impress investors, and other firms were beginning to pick off Retronics's market share. The board was stamping its collective feet, and George was running out of ideas.

"The business is out there," Pete Dmitrijevich, the chairman, had said. "And you have talented marketing people. Your lead stream should look better than this."

Tempted to reply that the storehouses of talent weren't as helpful as he'd hoped, George had bitten his tongue.

Bobby saw the crease deepening between his father's eyebrows. "What's wrong, Daddy?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing, Bobby," George said. "Just thinking. Eat your spaghetti."

If You Want Something Done Right

At 4:30 the next afternoon, George felt the need to stretch his legs. Walking down the hall, he saw Shelley Stern, the new marketing director, coming toward him. She was deeply engrossed in a press release draft, and he swerved to avoid her.

"How's it coming, Shelley?" George called out.

She started.

"Mind if I take a peek?" he asked.

"Uh, sure," Shelley said, handing the papers over--a little reluctantly, George thought. "I'm...still just messing around with it."

George read the press release headline aloud. "'Mortimont Corporation Adopts PrexPro.' Isn't that kind of a soft--"

"It's just a working title," Shelley interrupted. "I write the headlines last."

He continued to read. "How about a stronger quote? Maybe something like, 'According to CEO George Latour, anyone who isn't using the PrexPro Toolset is using Stone Age technology'?"

"I just don't think they'd print that," Shelley countered. "We might have a better chance with something a little more measured."

George said patiently, "I see your point, Shelley, but it's not like they ever print these things verbatim. Any self-respecting reporter is going to assume a certain amount of hyperbole and discount it. So if you come out the gate sounding humble, they're going to figure there's really nothing there. A quote with some attitude might just get them to sit up and take notice. So," he concluded, "I'd really like to see this copy do two things: one, emphasize the innovation and, two, exude confidence."

Pursing her lips, Shelley nodded slightly.

"Thanks, Shel," George said with edgy cheeriness. "You're the best."

George knew Shelley hated to have her work criticized. But he tried to keep things constructive. If she was going to rise to her potential, she needed the feedback. And, anyway, he couldn't afford underperformance. As far as the rest of the organization was concerned, Shelley Stern was his hire--one of the first he'd made, in fact. The quality of her work reflected directly on him.

In truth, Shelley hadn't been his recruit but had come into the company by way of the board's chairman. Pete loved to describe a rock-climbing event that Shelley had invented for a trade show. The booth included a replica of the Matterhorn, a climbing wall, and a 30-foot bungee-cord drop that had been the talk of the show and produced a flood of new leads. "Just you wait," Pete had told him when George announced that Shelley had taken the job. "She's a thoroughbred. Train her in the business. Then give her her head, and you'll see what a difference she can make."

To bring her up to speed, George had had her sit in on some of the developers' meetings. She'd accompanied the sales force on client calls to see and hear from customers directly. He'd even asked the CFO to explain the company's cash flow situation to her. But he still found many of her decisions a bit off target. She was a solid project manager who knew how to produce handsome marketing collateral and wade through the logistics of trade shows. But that direct mail campaign she'd launched? Or the format of the seminar Retronics hosted? Not how he would have done it. So he kept editing her work, explaining what really mattered to customers, how they arrived at their purchasing decisions, and how Retronics's value proposition could be made clearer. If she became more effective in the long run, that was time well invested, and it could even be personally fulfilling to mentor someone with real potential. The problem now was Shelley seemed increasingly disengaged--not as hungry to learn as she'd seemed at first. Maybe she was dealing with some personal problems. Whatever the issue was, it would have to be addressed. He couldn't keep doing her job forever.

Every Move You Make

Shelley fell onto the sofa, kicked off her shoes, and turned on the evening news. Scenes of carnage halfway across the world flared into her living room. Disgusted and depressed, she turned off the set, poured herself a glass of wine, and picked up the phone. She craved advice. She left a message for Laura, her friend and former boss, who had put a successful career on hold to raise two small children.

Shelley sipped her wine thoughtfully. She'd left a comfortable position at a successful computer hardware firm, where she'd received high accolades for her marketing work. She thought ruefully of the now-retired CEO of her previous firm, who had told her that Retronics was a "perfect next step" for her. Laura, too, had said good things about George Latour, with whom she'd worked earlier in her career. And then there were all those stock options. It seemed like a no-lose proposition. Despite the fact that she didn't know a lot about software engineering, she knew she could learn quickly.

Shelley thought again of George's breezy "You're the best." The man certainly wanted to be liked. And she had liked him, at least originally. He had enthusiastically spoken about Retronics's need to "get out there and make some noise." She thought that meant he would let her try creative things. Ha.

The phone rang.

"Hey, Shel. How's it going?"

The sound of her old friend's cheerful voice lifted her mood a little. Then Shelley heard Max, Laura's five-year-old, calling in the background.

"Why is it they start the second you get on the phone?" Laura asked rhetorically." Hang on, Shel." Shelley heard the handset click onto a surface and listened to her friend mollify the little one. "Here is some nice white paper. Can you draw some more aliens for me?"

"Okay, all settled," said Laura as she picked up the phone. "Go ahead, Shel."

"Laura, I could use your advice. It's about George. He's driving me crazy!"

Laura listened sympathetically while Shelley described the situation. George was in her face, Shelley complained. He didn't trust her judgment. He haunted the hallways and got into conversations with her staff--sometimes getting them off track by signaling what he thought was important. He insisted on issuing a minimum of two press releases each month, even when there wasn't any real news to report. He made her tag along on sales calls to "listen in," despite the fact she had mountains of other work to do. Shelley was

spread too thin. When she'd asked for help--if not additional staff, at least an outside contractor--he'd said to list everything she was working on, and he'd help her prioritize.

"Honestly, Laura, I've never had to deal with someone breathing down my neck like this. What should I do?"

"I'm sure George is under a lot of pressure," Laura offered. "Maybe he's unloading some of that on you. I'm tempted to say you should just tell him to back off and let you do your job. He might respect that. But, of course, I don't know the specifics. I guess you need to be sure, for all these things he's second-guessed you on, that he wasn't right."

Shelley bristled a little but conceded the point." OK, a few things I admit I got wrong. But on most of it, I think my instincts have been good. I don't know the business like he does, but he should give me credit for being the better marketer. He's an engineer, for Pete's sake."

Laura laughed. "Well, maybe you shouldn't put it to him in those terms, but you ought to point out that you have some basis for your opinions. Your only other option is to just ignore him, do what you think is right, and let the results speak for themselves. Let the proof be in the pudding." There was a sound of something crashing to the floor. "Oh, Max, you should have asked for help with that! Sorry, Shel, gotta go. Can you send me an e-mail? Hang in there. Bye."

Shelley hung up the phone reluctantly. "Maybe I should just call in sick tomorrow," she thought. "Let George make the edits himself. He's bound to change it anyway."

Sweating the Details

Early the next morning, Shelley met with Rich Harmon, who had been the project manager on one of Retronics's recent success stories--a large deployment at a national bank. She was working with him to draft a trade magazine article on the project. He'd resisted at first, worrying that the client wouldn't want to reveal what was behind its new competitive advantage. But she'd persuaded him to invite the client to coauthor the article, and, to his surprise, the client had jumped at the idea.

"Tell me about the most challenging moments in the project," she prompted the manager. "Were there any setbacks you can recall that had to be dealt with creatively?"

Rich leaned back and rubbed his chin. "I guess we were most nervous around April, when we thought we were looking at a significant overrun. But I don't think we want to put that in the article."

"You had to go back to the well with the client?" Shelley sympathized. "That's never pretty."

Rich assured her that hadn't been an option. But fortunately, he explained, a big chunk of code from another project turned out to be reusable, which his team hadn't counted on. "Good thing you thought of that," Shelley said, though she doubted it could ever be turned into exciting copy.

"To tell you the truth, it was George who thought of it," Rich explained. "He called me one night. He had the project plan right in front of him. Found some other stuff, too."

Shelley sat straighter in her chair at the mention of George. So she wasn't alone. She studied Rich's face to see whether she'd found a kindred spirit. "Kind of a mixed blessing, isn't it?" she ventured. "When George takes an interest, I mean. He can be pretty hands-on."

"Hands-on isn't the beginning of it," laughed Rich. "He's elbow deep in the stuff." But something in his manner told her not to pursue the subject further.

Is It Me or Is It Him?

"Shelley, can I speak to you for a minute in my office?" George asked.

Shelley thought instantly of her resolve the night before to call in sick. Why hadn't she? She surely felt sick now. "What's he going to have a problem with this time?" she wondered.

George's wife and children smiled happily from a frame on his shiny desk, but he didn't look nearly as welcoming, despite his casual-Friday jeans and denim shirt.

"Hi, George," Shelley said and attempted a smile.

"Come in. Have a seat." He waved her to one of two leather chairs in front of his desk. "I want to talk about this release. This draft you sent me this morning--it's not the final one, right?"

"Should be. It's scheduled to go out this afternoon, so the reporters will have it first thing Monday. Just waiting for your blessing," Shelley answered.

"Um, I can't bless this yet," George said tensely. "Shelley, I asked you to work on the tone of this yesterday, did I not? And look at this," he said, handing her the paper. She saw that he'd crossed out some sentences and inserted new ones in his hard-to-read handwriting. "I caught two typos." He paused. He could feel the blood throbbing in his temples, but he held down his temper. "Look, I count on you to get these things right. I don't have time to worry about them myself."

Shelley's heart pounded as Laura's advice came back to her. "If I'm going to object, I'd better be right," she thought.

"I can certainly change those things," she began. "But first I should explain better why I wrote it the way I did." She took a breath and plunged ahead. "And I also wonder if we can talk a little more generally. The fact is that lately I've been fairly distressed myself."

George raised an eyebrow. "I just knew she had personal problems," he thought.

"Go ahead," he said, trying to display some emotional intelligence.

Encouraged, Shelley opened up. "Well, to be honest, I've felt a lot of pressure here lately. I believe I'm a pretty smart, talented person who knows my job and who has a lot to contribute. I deliver great results if I feel my judgment is trusted." She wanted to add, "and if I'm treated like a professional," but thought better of it. "On the other hand, I really don't do very well if I feel like someone's micromanaging me."

George's jaw worked as he struggled to keep his composure. "Please understand that the last thing I want to do is micromanage," he said. "There are a lot of things competing for my time, and I would dearly love to take my eye off one of them and feel it was being well managed. But the fact is, if I see errors in the last draft of a press release, I begin to wonder what else is going wrong."

Shelley's lips were pressed tightly together and her eyes shone. "Whatever you do, don't cry!" she chided herself. Not trusting her voice, she simply rose from her chair, nodded, and walked out of the office.

George's first thought was to call after her, to get her to come back and resolve the issue. But he checked the impulse, suddenly aware that he would be telling her what to do. In any case, he was in no frame of mind now to listen politely while she offered a rationale for her tepid press release. "Micromanaging!" He thought of the term with disgust. Wasn't it interesting how he'd never heard really capable people complain about being micromanaged?

Bronwyn Fryer