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I'm really here to do today is talk to you about micromanagement and what I learned about micromanagement by being a micromanager over the last few years of my life. But first off, what is micromanagement? How do we How do we really define it while I posit that it's actually taken great, wonderful, imaginative people like all of you bringing them into an organization and then crushing their souls by telling them what bond size to use, you know? And so, in the history of mankind, has anyone ever said this? John, we were never going to close that deal with times New Roman. But because you insisted on Helvetica bam dotted line, millions of dollars start to flow. That was the missing piece. No one's ever said that, right?

There's actually physical manifestations that we probably see in ourselves by being micromanaged. Think about some of the most tired you've ever been in your life, right? It probably wasn't when you stayed the latest at work or wasn't when you came home from a road trip. It was probably when you had someone looking over your shoulder watching your each and every move, kind of like my mother in law. When she's over it, right, so you know, I'm like I got this, you know? And so there's actually data to support this. So there was a recent study in the UK They took 100 hospital employees, put an activity tracker on them and then let them go about their no next 12 hour shift, all alone, just a regular 12 hour shift.

At the end of the shift, they asked him, Do you feel fatigued? And what they found was actually really interesting. So it wasn't necessarily the people who moved the most. That felt the most fatigued. But it was the folk that didn't have control over their jobs. So we know that micro management isn't really effective. Why do we do it? So is it that the definition is wrong? So I posited that, you know, micro management is just bringing in great, wonderful, imaginative people and then crushing their souls. So is it that we actually wanna hire deep down inside of us,

dull and unimaginative people? I don't know. It's one of those questions you probably don't even need to ask, right? It's like, Do you want to get your luggage stolen at the airports like probably not. But I've never been asked. Right. So has anyone have asked you as a manager? Like, Do you want to hire dull and unimaginative people? So I know this is Ted. We better back it up with data. So we actually asked hundreds of people around the country. Hundreds of managers are across the country. Do you want to hire dull and unimaginative people all rights?

An interesting question. Well, interesting results as well. So 94% said No way. Don't want to hire dull and unimaginative people, right? 6% probably didn't understand the question, but but bless their hearts. Maybe they do just want a hard telling, unimagined people. But 94% said they did not. And so why do we do this? Still then? Well, I posit that it's something really, really simple that all of us deep down inside no.

And I've actually felt so when we get hired into an organization, it could be a club. It could be a law firm. It could be, ah, school organization. It could be anything. No one ever jumps to the top of the totem pole. Right? You start at the very bottom doing what? Doing work. You actually do the work, right? And if you're really good at doing the work, what do you get rewarded with more work, right?

And so you do. Yeah, that's right. You know, you guys all great, Michael, managers, eso you do more work. And then pretty soon, if you're really good at it, you do a little bit of work still. But actually, you start to manage people doing the work. And if you're really good at that, what happens after that? You start managing the people who manage the people doing the work,

and it's at that point in time you start to lose control over the output of your job. I've actually witnessed this firsthand. So I started a company called Box Our Garage, and this was it. I know it doesn't seem like much, you know, but But it was, you know, his pressure. Washington back. This is living the dream. And, you know, my wife was really proud of me when we started this or what? She said, you know,

she was really proud of me. And so she would give me a hug. And I'm pretty sure like she had her phone up and she was thinking, Oh, John from Harvard Still single. You know, it's kind of like a lemonade stand gone wrong in the beginning. But we actually went up and, you know, said mobile commerce is gonna be big and actually consumer packaged goods, we're gonna change over time. So let's take these big, bulky packs that you don't want to look home. So not the two pack of Oreo cookies, but the 24 pack and not the 24 pack of toilet paper but the 48 pack and let's ship it to you much like a warehouse club would do. Except they wouldn't ship it to you.

And so that's what we basically did. And so we had a really slow printer, and what we did was actually say, OK, this print is taking forever, man like Okay, let's scribble something that would delight the customer on the back of these invoices. That would say, Hey, you know, keep smiling. You know? Hey, you know, like you're awesome or hey, enjoy the Doritos or,

you know, we love Gatorade to stuff like that. And so it start breaking up the monotony of the job as well. Because I was picking and packing all the boxes. And that's all you basically do for 89 10 12 hours a day when you're sitting in the garage. Uh, and so an interesting thing happened, So we actually started to grow. Uhm And so you know, over the last, actually, just even 36 months After that, we ended up selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff and we actually grew really, really quickly. But during that time, my role started to change too.

So, yes, I was a CEO in the garage that was picking, impacting, doing all the work. But then I actually graduated to actually, you know, managing the people who picked impact. And then pretty soon I managed the people who managed to people picking and packing. Even now, I managed to see staff who managed the department's who managed the people who manage the people picking and packing and is at that point in time I lost control. So I thought, OK, we were delighting all these customers with these notes, right? They loved him.

But I can't write these notes anymore. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna tell these folks how to write these notes, and so what? Pen to use what color To use what you should write. What fun you should use. Don't mess up the margins. You know, this has to be this big. This has to be that big. And pretty soon, this goal of raising morale by breaking up the monotony, the fulfillment center actually became micromanagement. People started complained to HR. It's like, Dude,

the CEO guy, he's got to get on my hair. Okay. I know how to write a damn note. Okay, so is that point in time? Uh, we said Okay. You know, uh, we hired this great wonderful people. Let's give him the mission. That's to delight the customer. Let's give him the tool to do so. And that's these notes have at it. And so what we found was actually pretty startling.

So some folks actually took the notes and actually started drawing these really ornate, like many murals on them. You know, when folks order diapers, you get really fun notes like this, You know, Say hi to the baby for us and you know, the next size up. You know, if you bought a bigger size, they'd write you know, growing up so fast. And so people really, really took to it. Um, it was at that time that it also went off the rails a few times.

And so we had someone just writing THX THX all the time. It's like, All right, dude, you know, like my bosses to write that to me, And so let's not right THX anymore. But you also had interesting things on the other side. People got a little too creative. And so, like I said before, we sell everything in bulk. Right? The big packs of diapers, big pack of toilet paper, the big packs of Doritos and Oreo cookies.

We also sell the big packs of contraception. And so he was gonna get military. That's it. So we sell the 40 pack of condoms, right? We're all adults in the room, you know, 40 pack of condoms. And so someone ordered 4 40 packs of condoms on. That's all. They wrote all the all the ordered. So 160 condoms. The packet was like, I know how to delight the customer. You know, like this You don't like this guy.

This is you. This is what they wrote. So, uh Yeah, we're not a fire hammered too prone him, but he's still there. So everyone loves an optimist. But here, here is what? It went a little bit off the rails and I felt a little bit conflicted in all of this. And Oh, there's a really bad typo. So if there was only a red t d on stage that counted on being here, it wouldn't be a typo. Right? I promise you,

I had a really bad sense of humor, and now I've gotta find that. So I told you. But I really was conflicted, right? At this point in time, we started doing things that actually weren't part of our core mission, and people started failing at it. And so I thought, and it should we let them fail? Should we continue to let them do this? I don't know why. I didn't know at that moment, but I thought this It's failure really that bad? I mean, I'm not saying we should celebrate failure.

There's a lot of talk in Silicon Valley, says Let's celebrate failure. No, I don't know if we're going all the way there because, like, you know, our board meetings like our board members are never like h. You failed last quarter. Keep doing that, buddy. Okay? You know, like no one's ever said that if you're part of an organization like that, give me a call. I want to sit in on that meeting. And so,

in private, I think many people celebrate failure. But actually, failure deposit is actually pretty necessary for the folks truly in the long term for the smart and imagine of people truly trying to fulfill the mission that you give them at hand. And so failure can actually be seen as a milestone along that mission towards success. And still, the downside of not micromanaging is potentially this perceived notion that you might fail more often. And it's really not that bad. What is the upside? What? We saw the upside. It's pretty great. So we tasked our engineers and said, Hey, you know, our some of our fulfillment centers cost millions of dollars to build.

There's miles and miles of conveyor. And so can you do the same thing? Can you make them efficient without spending millions of dollars? So they got to work. They actually did this. You know, this photo shop, the guys like really grinding and it's like they built in all time, have skied a vehicle. We didn't tell him what to build what format it needed to be in 90 days that produced the first prototype powered off Tesla battery stairs got the camera's light. Our systems. It basically replicates the efficiency of a conveyor belt without the actual cap ex of a conveyor belt so it doesn't actually just stop with engineers are marketing team Barman. We told them, Hey, you know, get the word out,

do the right thing. So we have this wonderful lady by the name of Natasha on the marketing team. She stopped me in the morning. She's like Che, What are we doing about the pink tax? Ah, when I got my coffee and I sat down and said, Okay, Natasha, what is this Pink tax? And so she told me, It's really interesting. So some of you might know that actually, in 32 states across America, we actually charge a luxury good tax on women's products like feminine care products, So tampons and pads are tax like luxury good items,

so I would never dare call my wife or if she called me and said, Hey, hunt, bring some pads on the way home. And I said, Maybe, you know, there's a trade war going on. The economy is not that good. So no luxury goods this month, But next month, I promise, you know, I'll take a look at it. You know, I've been single pretty quickly,

right? But what what Super interesting is Now, we didn't tell them what to do. But now, working with finance, they rebate the tax back to customers all around the country that we unfairly have to collect. And so, at this point in time, you might be thinking, Okay, what is the really real upside of? Not micromanaging? And it's this. I didn't do any of these projects. I don't make the GI ve I didn't do the paint. Rethink paying tax campaign.

Don't do any of this, but I'm standing here on the ted stage taking all the credit for it. Yeah, like Scott does nothing. It takes all the credit for it. He's a real CEO. This guy's really got it down, you know? But the reality is this. I don't have the CEO thing down 100% pat, but I've actually learned the most fundamentally challenging lesson I've ever had to learn. And that's this. There is on Lee one solution to micro management, and that's the trust. Thank you

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