Is Micro-managing all that bad?

Part I of the series on: Learning from Failure and the Justification that They’re for the Sake of the Learning Curve

Let me turn to you the attention of one article that would probably not have grabbed your attention: CNBC's "How Start Ups Can Climb the Global Growth Learning Curve". But how do know we are in a learning curve situation? Let’s put it another way. How do we know that we have to agree that failure in the beginning is almost a superior alternative to success. Had we been successful, little would have changed; and for the long-term it’s a more advantageous proposition. Or is it, that we use this as an excuse to justify our failure after we have committed the crime of a long-termism and forgotten the ‘short picture’ or the ‘small picture’ as one might put it?

The ‘big picture’ argument has been steadily used since the 1980s. Simply take a look at google Ngram and notice (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=big+picture&year_start=18…). Previous uses of the term bare very little resemblance to the way we understand it today. R.A. Griffen first applied this term in 1942 during the Second World War to justify American failure in the Kasserine Pass, when two American divisions were walloped by a measly kampgruppe of fifty tanks and a few thousand Germans on the attack. The term really doesn't appear until 1974, when H.L. Forester took to the cinema of consulting (when consulting was fashionable that is) to teach people about how to improve their ‘routines’, which takes from Edith Penrose’s analysis of how firms evolve over time.

We can see a pretty easy transition, or evolution, of the term when in the English language very few terms existed that were quite like it. Another term that became common in business was evolution which was rarely used in the business literature until after, about the 1990s and now, as well as many others. So Griffen asks, ‘What then is strategy?.. The term applies to the big picture; it is used in direction of campaigns, the planning of operations, and the fighting of battles to win wars.’ He’s essentially arguing, in a very innovative fashion at the time, that the long-term vision of leader, business owner, or a company commander is to plan on a big-scale -- the term essentially denies the very important smaller issue of tactics. Tactics in the military, again look at Ngram, can now equate to company culture, company ethics, company procedures, and so on.

Let’s take a more modern example of this focal lens on trying to improve organisations over time. In 1998, The Nation produced an article simply saying that ‘Carey's defenders have portrayed him as a big-picture leader who delegates details to others.’ It does not dismiss this as a stupid or silly defence, but merely begs the idea that perhaps he should delegate better. In essence, it argues, like many consultants or economists today, that this process of leaders tying organisations to them is valid because this is what general organisation theory argues: through the routine of delegating important projects to subordinates is not only valid, but a leader should continue on with it. But why is it that Carey’s defenders think it is fine for a leader to basically concern only with the big-picture?

Calling the opposite of such a practice is called micro-managing. Odd that the term only comes to fruition as a counter as a hideous practice and the opposite of what consultants tell their clients to do today when leaders are taught to focus on big-picture events, which we can actually pinpoint to about 1978. The term was a technical one used first by Aviation Weekly in that year. It later was reproduced by everything from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal from the early 1980s and onward.

Micro-managing became a thing of disdain. But before this practice became a bad thing why is it that so many leaders were convinced of its worth before-hand? Churchill was a well-known micro-manager, before the term because a bad one, and a well known big-picture thinker he spent most if his time on the opposite end. Guess which one of these two angles the British government were more annoyed by? Well you can imagine, taking the time to draw large outlines of operations became less telling than his other partiality toward organising tactics, new weapons systems and so forth for the British Army was the one Churchill actually spent much more time on.

Churchill hired and fired about 80 Generals in his tenure. It got to the point that the subordinate of his subordinate’s subordinate was fired by the Prime Minister and not by the military staff. He is said to have taken after an incident from another famous leader who came across a unit that had got lost during the approach march to the Rhine, and he was able to inform its astonished officer, without consulting any orders, of the whereabouts of its division, and where it would be on the next three nights, throwing in for good measure a résumé of its commander’s military record.

Abraham Lincoln, also a massive micro-manager, and much more so than his ability to cope with ‘big-picture’, hired and fired about 40 Generals in just three years -- he even hired and fired brigadier generals. He dealt with looking over new uniforms, finding new young officers, and so on. Lincoln actually spent more time on this than his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Instead, he delegated his subordinate to focus on the ‘big-picture’ so he supervised on what we could title the ‘small-picture’, intervening only when he needed in the other case. The ‘big-picture’, like planning the Union strategy to win the war was left to his staff like Stanton. The Anaconda Plan to encircle the Confederacy from the sea and by land? Definitely not Lincoln’s doing. In fact, he rather disliked the idea from the start.

Lincoln never intervened, even when he was supposed to be 'supervising' an important staff member that only he could fire like his chief army commander and General of the Army of the Potomac, George B. McClellan. McClellan would not follow what his regime considered the big-picture strategy at the time, and only after the general had failed to win several times from the Four Forks to Antietam‎ did President fire him -- but for that reason. On other matters, even little things like if the British or French would recognize the South, something he was more worried about than a the destruction of his army, Lincoln left to Secretary William H. Seward because he had an natural proclivity with such big-policy wonk questions and the President never instructed him otherwise actually.

Perhaps even more modern leaders like Churchill made mistakes, unjustifable given the time they took. Lincoln made many too -- he often spent the quiet ‘winter-season’ granting clemency to soldiers in various Union stockades. He was a lawyer after all. Obama, also a lawyer, apparently doesn't like the idea because it’s too small for someone of such a high-stature (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/16/obamas-few-pardons-follows-…). One can estimate that given the number of various proposals to building roads, granting building contracts, and many many more things that crossed Lincoln’s desk, he never ‘delegated’ such trivial, as we see it, tasks to someone in his staff (and of course we can see this in the film Lincoln, when hundreds are there trying to get an audience with him, and him and only him). This leader, like others, liked looking at the little things to make sure they were right.

Going back to Churchill, he too took a lot of time with the little things. He visited factories not to raise the morale of its workers, which sometimes he tried doing with marvelous speeches from his own pen, but to see if he could add any input into the design of tanks (one of which eventually bore his name), new weapons like the PIAT (which was pretty crappy but compared to the American Bazooka was worlds ahead), and so on. Churchill took the time to create new units, select new officers, and much, much more.

He expected his staff to do the big-picture. In fact, most of his staff was there to do exactly that. His Minister for foreign policy and foreign affairs was the young, but venerated diplomat, Anthony Eden. His head of administering the Empire was Clement Atlee, who as Deputy Prime Minister essentially ran day-to-day thing but also Britain's overall strategy to cope with the demands of the war at home (the Beveridge Report comes to mind, which Atlee commissioned and was could never have been Churchill's doing. For those not aware of its importance, it essentially planned what British society should look like for years, decades, after the war).

All these operational-like decisions were ‘big-picture things’, something Obama does with his advisers and does not delegate to his staff members like his predecessors had once done on a daily basis. Who do you think comes up with the 10-year plan to reduce the deficit? We know from Simon Johnson’s books that it not Geithner. Unlike in pre-modern times before the 1970s, cabinet members would do these things -- i.e. department leaders -- and instead we expect Presidents to figure out a massive economic policy he has no real knowledge in but filters into the decision process for his grandly called and acclaimed Council of Economic Advisers’ to propose and for the President to follow-up and execute upon -- a thoroughly post-1970s concept.

We can see that the number of advisers in the modern-world of governance has been taken to rather ridiculous proportions. Leaders are no longer expected to make sure their organisation is following his mandated procedures every day -- his subordinates are. Leaders now are told that big things, big plans, presented to shareholders for example, are what they are in the job to do.

Lincoln had few advisers. Churchill had even less. Perhaps the only real adviser Churchill had was his wife, Clemey... and perhaps his Chief of Staff, the 1st Viscount General Alanbrooke, which he routinely ignored anyway, even in trivial matters. The only time he did listen to him was on occasions of ‘big-picture’ events such as the commissioning of an entire new theatre in Italy -- even then he eventually ignored Brookie’s advice and launched what became one of history’s well-known stupid expeditions like the invasion of Anzio (or Operation Shingle, see Roger Waters, Pink Floyd songwriter's tune When the Tigers Broke Free which is summed up audibly by verse: "And that's how the High Command took my Daddy from me").

But it could have been much, much worse had he not taken the grand strategy focused, Imperial Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Alanbrooke on board -- because the General was the one who planned the war. Churchill’s second front? Well it was up to his American counterpart George Marshall and Alanbrooke to tell him if it was infeasible until it became less so by the winter of 1944. Churchill’s new offensive into Norway in 1943? Alanbrooke told him no. Churchill to take over Greece in 1944 -- Brookie told him to go to hell. Churchill's wish to renew the Empire by annexing Thailand, in 1945? -- George Marshall sent him a telegram not politely telling him to go to hell and just fine their government, not in bust of cash but in rice (something the country had a surplus of anyway).

Churchill supervised but never actually lead the charge in terms of the big-picture -- Churchill however was in total control as de facto Commander-in-Chief in the little things though, because that’s how he figured he could add the most value. He was a soldier first and foremost, and like Lincoln who was a lawyer by trade, he could sense opportunity to ‘help’ in even the smallest smidgen of a document from the War Department. Perhaps that’s why the two collectively slept but three-four hours a day -- or less.

Also, a massive organisation like Morgan Stanley has 14 Board of Directors, with no real power beyond giving their sound judgement to CEO James Gorman. Gorman, like the J.C. Penny CEO Ron Johnson, take vacations. They want to be rested so he could assume the big decision capacity now normally expected of leaders of equally big organisations. Henry S. Morgan and Harold Stanley in 1935, the bank’s initial founders, had no such plan and never took vacations -- nor did anyone in the culture at the time as well unless there was nothing happening.

Why bother bothering with the ‘big-picture’ if you can hire someone to do that? They argued that at least. The banking pair wanted to go down the line to create the routines of the company: getting clients, rolling out new deals, because that’s what they were good at.

Like Lincoln the lawyer, Churchill the soldier, the two brothers were bankers! Bankers, they probably shouted at one point, let’s start banking! A thing like how the company should look in 2-3 years was delegated to department leaders -- the visionaries who were paid because they did exactly that. They were in charge of how their departments would look in that time-frame, not the little things, because they, like Churchill’s many cabinet ministers or Lincoln’s Secretaries, were supposed to worry about how the growth or overall plan of the country or company could be affected while these leaders channelled their efforts into other activities they considered their organisation’s bread and butter.

President Obama barely looks at correspondence from his staff members; let alone letters from the public! On the other hand, the two Stanley brothers were fantastic bankers and so they banked and figured out the littlest formalities of their institution -- from new means and clients to expanding their checking account business to looking over large money orders. Churchill was a war leader -- more so war than being a leader in our sense. He visited the front on many occasions and even tried to be on the first-wave of the assault into Normandy before King Edward VII ordered him that in this event if the Prime Minister would go, the King would go too. Additionally, Lincoln was a lawyer. The petitions he looked over, even if you go into his diary, probably spans tens of thousands in just four years.

Why did this all happen? Leadership often meant micromanaging because they were there to set an example and to lead from the front and not from the rear.