Write down a list of what you’re worried about for each project and person so you can immediately see when the list is getting too long and you need to either dive deeper or back off.
Tony Fadell in Build
I lead teams at the intersection of strategy and design. Autodidact. Polymath. Barbecue acolyte. I start fires (the good kind).
Write down a list of what you’re worried about for each project and person so you can immediately see when the list is getting too long and you need to either dive deeper or back off.
Tony Fadell in Build
Ivy Ross, vice president of hardware design at Google, has said, “It’s not data or intuition; it’s data and intuition.”
Tony Fadell in Build
Examining the product in great detail and caring deeply about the quality of what your team is producing is not micromanagement.
Tony Fadell in Build
The outcome is your business. How the team reaches that outcome is the team’s business. When you get deep into the team’s process of doing work rather than the actual work that results from it, that’s when you dive headfirst into micromanagement. (Of course sometimes it turns out that the process is flawed and leads to bad outcomes. In that case, the manager should feel free to dive in and revise the process. That’s the manager’s job, too.)
Tony Fadell in Build
Being exacting and expecting great work is not micromanagement. Your job is to make sure the team produces high-quality work. It only turns into micromanagement when you dictate the step-by-step process by which they create that work rather than focusing on the output.
Tony Fadell in Build
But you can’t overdo it—you can’t create so much space that you lose track of what’s going on or are surprised by what the product becomes. You can’t let it slide into mediocrity because you’re worried about seeming overbearing. Even if your hands aren’t on the product, they should still be on the wheel.
Tony Fadell in Build