Founders

In defense of micromanagement

Delegation is over-rated, micro-management is under-rated and misunderstood.

 Zuck talks about this
“probably one of my most controversial leadership or management things is I don’t actually believe in delegating that much. I kinda think like the way a founder should work is you should basically make as many decisions and get involved as in as many things as you can”


Every great founder in my experience  does the above - see Elon or Jensen Huang. 

They are in the details – every technical nuance, every financial model’s implications, every pixel. I rarely see a great company run in any other way.


The natural question that gets asked is: doesn’t this make every leader below them unhappy? I’ll answer this empirically: look at the core leadership team of any of these companies and you’ll see they have the same set of people for many, many years

Brian Chesky believes something similar IIRC. Being in the details is part of good leadership. By being in the details you can micro-manage without coming off out of touch. If you’re not in the details, the person you’re trying to manage will resent you trying to tell them how to do the job.