The danger of micromanagement

A pretty cool job

We MADE this! This went on a race car we built.

Halfway through my sophomore year as a mechanical engineering student, I got a pretty cool job as a lab assistant in the college machine tool shop.  I got to wear the coveralls and walk around with an oil can to make sure that the mills and lathes were maintained.  Since it was a school machine shop, I didn't do much manufacturing of my own, but spent a lot of time helping other students make parts for school projects.


The grownup
The only grownup on staff was a long-time employee of the college:  Ken Forster.  He wore his thin hair slicked to the side and had a full mustache.  Ken was as much a fixture in that shop as any of the machinery.  The decades of expertise that he provided to the students could not have been replaced by any number of books on machining.  For good or for bad, that shop was his baby.

Ken had his way of doing things.  All of it was based on experience... HIS experience.  When we calculated the proper speeds at which to run the mill,
Ken wanted us to divide by some safety factor that wasn't recorded anywhere.  When students came in to make a replacement part for something that had broken on their bike, Ken would frequently turn them away. "This isn't the university hobby shop!" He would tell them to go buy it.  When people would mention a part for their car that they had bought, he'd ask why they didn't just make it.  "We have all the tools that you need for that right here!"

A couple of times each school year,  someone would turn on some machine begin cutting metal and Ken would RUN out of his office with both hands out in front of him shouting "What are you DOING?!" The student would explain what he or she was doing and Ken might (or might not) suggest a better way to do it.

Undoubtedly, Ken had a tough job.  End mills were frequently broken by misuse.  There was a constant risk of injury.  And he was 1000 times more skilled than anyone else he interacted with.


Burning out
The tough part about MY job, however, was guessing how Ken was going to react.  When a student came in with a design for a part that would be tricky to clamp hold in a vice, I spent more time wondering whether Ken would approve than I spent deciding if my plan would work.  Often, having it work was the easy part.  Setting it up in a way that wouldn't cause Ken to make us start over was the hard part.

Eventually, that watchful, experienced eye was what made me take a job as an assistant in a different lab during my last semester before graduation. 

For me, this was an early lesson on the dangers of micromanagement.  When I came into the job, I knew nothing and needed a lot of coaching.  It wasn't too long, however, before I was teaching classes on how to use the equipment, and had a pretty good track record for safety and quality.  I loved the premise of the job.  It's fun to look at an engineering drawing and work backwards in your mind to decide how to make it.  But in that environment, the challenge and the reward were squelched by someone else who ultimately made every decision.


If you're the lab assistant
My dad told me once (having quit US Bank after he worked there fifteen years) that people don't leave companies, they leave managers.  There's a lot of truth to that.  In my case, there was nothing I could do to change the way that Ken ran his shop. If I wanted to be trusted to make challenging decisions, I would have to do it somewhere else. This might someday be you.

If you're the lab manager
You have a lot of responsibilities.  You certainly have metrics of your own to meet.  Sales numbers, quality measures, number widgets shipped, etc.  But keep in mind that your employees are what allow you to make those numbers.  If you treat your team members like they're lucky to have a job with you, then eventually you'll be left only with a team that has no other options after your best talent has left.  People need more than a paycheck to stay around.  For me and the readers of this blog, we need challenge, a sense of accomplishment, opportunity for progression, and a connection to a larger purpose.  Don't squelch that by insisting that the work be done according to your indefinable preferences.

How have you handled micro managers?  Join the discussion in the comments!