When and How to Micromanage 何时和如何进行微观管理 (作者: Joel Spolsky 2009-12-1 译者：狂刀)

When and How to Micromanage

何时和如何进行微观管理
原文地址：http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091201/when-and-how-to-micromanage.html
By Joel Spolsky |  Dec 1, 2009 (作者: Joel Spolsky  2009-12-1  译者：狂刀)
<原文>
Managers today are taught not to micromanage their employees. But there comes a time in every business when you need to step in and master the details.

On a recent visit to Austin, Ryan Carson and I got into a rental car and set off to visit, for the first time, the venue where we were hosting a conference the next day. Ryan's event-planning company, Carsonified, had teamed up with my company, Fog Creek Software, to produce a series of daylong technical conferences for software developers. Austin was the second stop on our 10-city tour, and we were expecting 200 developers to show up.

Between the pouring rain and the difficulty we had in finding the venue -- which was, oddly, tucked into the back corner of a strip mall -- I should have anticipated trouble. The first problems revealed themselves when we met the venue manager, and he started off by saying, "She only sent it to me yesterday."

"She who? Sent you what?" I asked.

She, we soon learned, was a member of Ryan's staff. And it was our detailed list of audio-visual requirements. Indeed, we probably should have gotten the list to the venue weeks in advance. "We've brought in an AV company to help," the venue manager continued, "but some of that stuff on your list -- you just ain't gonna have that."

The things we weren't gonna have, it turned out, were pretty important. Internet access for the speakers onstage. Microphones and a sound guy who could get them to work. The ability to turn on and off the lights onstage and in the theater. And, crucially, the ability to project video from the speakers' laptops onto a screen, something that was so utterly obvious it never occurred to us that any venue wouldn't have that capacity.
We scrambled all that afternoon to buy the gear we needed. We picked up the last thing on our list -- a video cable that was long enough to run from the laptops to the projector in the back of the room -- at an office-supply superstore barely an hour before our show was due to begin.

By the time the attendees arrived, we were completely frazzled. I had two speeches to deliver, which, luckily, I had memorized, so I could do them on autopilot while my brain worried about the crappy video, the crappy audio, the buzzing from the stage-monitor speakers, the fan noise from the amplifiers oddly placed right next to the stage -- and, 10 minutes into my speech, the outrageously loud sound of a Weedwacker outside the auditorium. Despite the substandard AV equipment, everything went smoothly enough. Still, I was unhappy.
The next morning, I met with Ryan and his staff. His company had never had anything go wrong like this, and I'm sure Ryan won't be offended if I say that they were a little bit cocky, imagining the events business to be, I think, a tiny bit easier than it actually is.

So I wanted to go through the Five Whys exercise with Ryan and his staff. Five Whys is a problem-solving technique developed by Toyota after World War II to improve its manufacturing process. The idea is to ask "Why?" five times to get to the root of any failure, so you fix the core problem instead of the symptoms.

One problem in Austin was that we couldn't switch video fast enough. Why? Because we were using a cheap switch purchased at an office superstore. Why? Because we assumed the venue operators would provide a high-quality switch, which they didn't. Why? Because the venue didn't have our list of AV requirements. Why? Because we didn't get it there in time. Why? Because Carsonified didn't yet have a standard checklist of procedures for each conference: what to do one month before, one week before, one day before, etc. Solution: Better checklists, a suggestion Ryan says he'll follow up on.

Like most entrepreneurs, Ryan and I are still learning about how to manage people and teams. And we're both used to hiring very smart and dedicated people who will get things done to a high standard if you give them some general direction and set them free. But on this trip, we started to notice that this style of hands-off management, which works so well with our own staffs, just wasn't working when we had outside vendors involved.

Here's another example. At our tech conferences, attendees typically bring their laptops, and most have cell phones with Wi-Fi access. The minute they sit down, they open their laptops and start banging on the Internet. More often than not, the venue's Wi-Fi connection can't handle the load.

We know this is going to happen in advance, of course, and tell the venues that our audience is made up of really, really heavy Internet users. And they say, "No problem; we have A-Number-One excellent Internet! It's going to be great!"

Guess what? Usually the system is so overloaded, nobody can get on.

After the first event, in Boston, where the Internet was inadequate, Ryan apologized to me and said, "We're going to make this better!" And then he turned to one of his staff members, Greg, and said, "Make this better!" And Greg got on the phone and started trying to track down the person responsible for making it better.

But you know what? Getting good Wi-Fi in a room with hundreds of laptops is very, very difficult. Usually, it takes a couple of weeks of preparation, specialized equipment, and two or three dedicated technicians who have extensive experience in this exact problem. Almost nobody knows how to do it. And you can't just yell at people who don't know how to do something. (Well, you can, but it doesn't work.) So I'm yelling at Ryan and Ryan is yelling at Greg and Greg is yelling at some venue manager who vaguely knows how the Internet works, and the venue manager is calling the 800 line for the Internet service provider, and you know it's not going to get fixed that way. It's like pushing on string. You need some yanking ability, I think, with string.

In this case, to get what you want, you have to learn about access points, SSIDs, bandwidth, DHCP servers, IP address pools, and a hundred other technical details, and your vendor has to understand them, and you have to make sure your vendor understands them. This entails a level of micromanagement that I was taught is a bad thing. Isn't today's modern leader supposed to hire brilliant people, give them a little direction, and just let them go to work? Doesn't micromanagement turn smart people into robots?

Yes, maybe. But here's my new theory: At the top of every company, there's at least one person who really cares and really wants the product and the customer experience to be great. That's you, and me, and Ryan. Below that person, there are layers of people, many of whom are equally dedicated and equally talented.

But at some point as you work your way through an organization, you find pockets of people who don't care that much. For them, it's a job. They just want to get through the day and don't find it upsetting that the video switching is slow and the Wi-Fi went down and the geeks couldn't get to their Twitters.

If you're lucky, none of those people are employed by your company. But the minute you begin to rely on outside vendors, you expose yourself to their people, some of whom inevitably just won't care enough or know enough or have the right skills to deliver the awesome experience you're trying to deliver.

I care. Ryan cares. Our staffs care. The venue manager might care but doesn't know enough. The AV people he hired? Sometimes, they officially Don't Care, Don't Know How to Do Their Job, and Really Just Want to Go on Break. And the minute you cross that line, from the people who care to the people who want to go home, that's when you have to micromanage. You have to check in on people and inspect their work and sign contracts in blood demanding that if the Wi-Fi isn't perfect, it'll be free.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'd rather never have uncaring people squatting anywhere in my org chart. But realistically I know that sometimes these people are going to find their way into my life. I won't hire them at my company, but as we expand into conferences and events, between the theaters and caterers and Internet providers we'll be using, some of the key personnel will be beyond my control. And now we're learning, I hope, how to manage these things a bit better, so that we never have to frantically buy an extension cord at 8 in the morning.

Joel Spolsky is the co-founder and CEO of Fog Creek Software and the host of the popular blog Joel on Software. For an archive of his columns, go to www.inc.com/keyword/spolsky.
<译文>
管理人员今天从未被教着去微观管理他们的雇员. 但是每一个公司当需要干预和管理细节时，它将随之而来。

在最近去奥斯汀的一次旅程中，Ryan Carson 和我，我们首次在我们第二天要主持一场会议的地方，一起进到一辆租来的小车里坐下开始旅程。Ryan的活动策划公司Carsonified公司和我的公司已经联合，叫 Fog Creek 软件，来为开发者组织一系列的全日形式的技术会议。奥斯汀是我们10城市环游的第二站，我们期望有200个开发者参与。

在倾盆大雨和困难的寻找目标地点之间 – 那里奇怪的在一个购物中心后面的角落里 -- 我本应预料到的会遇到麻烦的。当我们与会场主管会谈时第一个问题出现了，他以这样一句话开始：“她昨天才发给我。”

 “她是指谁？发给你什么？”我问道。

我们很快知道，“她”是Ryan的一个雇员。发送的是我们视听支持需求的明细列表。的确，我们几星期前就应该把这个清单给场地。“我们争取到了一个AV公司的支持”会场主管继续说道：“但是你清单上的一些材料—你不可能找到。”

这些事情我们没有想到，事实证明，是非常重要的。演讲台的互联网访问、麦克风和能让它们工作的调音师、能开关舞台和讲台上灯光的人、以及决定性的能将演讲者便携设备上的项目视频投射到屏幕上的人，我们没有想到一个场地也可能不会提供所有这些极其明显的东西。

我们整个下午都在混乱的购买我们需要的工具。我们挑出清单中最后一件事—一根长的足够从演讲者便携设备到房间后面的放映机的视频电缆 – 勉强在我们开始演示前一个小时在一个办公用品超市找到了。

当参加会议的人到达时，我们已经完全累趴下了。我要进行两场演讲，幸运的是，我已经背下来了，所以我能够一边自动的演讲，一边担心那蹩脚的视频、蹩脚的音频、那吱吱作响的舞台监控耳机、奇怪地放在舞台旁边右侧的放大器的风扇噪音。但仍然在我演讲10分钟后，会场外的一个废品发出了凶暴巨大的噪音。鄙视不标准的AV设备，每件事本来足够顺利的。直到现在，我都不高兴。

第二天早上，我和Ryan和他的雇员进行了会谈。他的公司从未犯过像这样的错误，并且我确信即使我说他们有些过于骄傲自满，Ryan也不会反对。我想象中的这次活动业务，比它实际上容易得多。

所以我打算和Ryan及他的雇员进行“五个为什么”的练习。“五个为什么”是Toyota在二战后为了提高制造过程能力而发明的问题解决技巧。其想法是问五次“为什么”来找到失败的根源，以便你修正核心的问题而不是表面问题。

在奥斯汀的一个问题是我们无法足够快的切换视频。为什么？因为我们使用了在办公用品超市购买的廉价转换器。为什么？因为我们假定会场管理员将提供他们没有提供的高质量的转换器。为什么？因为会场没有我们提供的AV需求清单。为什么？因为我们没有按时给他们。为什么？因为Carsonified公司还没有为会议提供一个标准过程检查表：一个月前应做什么，一周前、一天前等等。解决方法：更好的检查表，Ryan说他将遵循这个建议。

像大多数企业家，Ryan和我仍然在学习如何管理员工和团队。我们都曾经雇佣过非常聪明和乐于奉献的员工，如果你给他们一些常规的指示并让他们自由发挥，他们能够将事务以高标准完成。但在这次旅途中，我们开始注意到撒手不管的管理方式，对我们自己的职员很有效，但一旦涉及到外部企业时就会无效。
这有另外一个例子。在我们的技术会议上，参与者通常带他们的移动设备，并且大多数有支持Wi-Fi访问的移动电话。当他们坐下时，他们打开他们的移动设备开始连接互联网。往往，会场的Wi-Fi连接无法承载这样的负载。

我们知道这在以前经常发生，当然，也曾告诉会场我们的观众由访问量非常非常严重的互联网用户构成。并且，他们说：“没问题，我们有极好的网络！它将工作得非常好！”

猜猜发生什么？通常系统会严重超载，没有人能访问互联网。

在第一次活动后,在波士顿,会场的互联网连接有些不足，Ryan建议我说：“我们将使它更好一点！” 然后他转向他的一个雇员Greg，说：“让它更好点！” Greg走到电话旁开始寻找负责的人来使它更好。

但你知道发生了什么？ 在一个具有上百台移动设备的房间里保持良好的Wi-Fi无线畅通是件非常非常困难的事情。 通常，这将需要好几周的准备，特别的设备以及两到三个在解决这个特定问题具有丰富经验的专业技术人员。 几乎没人知道如何去做。 你也不能对着不知道如何去做什么的人只是大喊大叫。 （好吧，你能，但这毫无用处。） 于是我朝Ryan喊叫、Ryan朝Greg喊叫，而Greg朝只是模糊知道互联网如何连接的会场管理者喊叫，然后会场管理者打互联网服务提供商的800电话。你知道那样根本得不到解决。 这就像去推一条线。 我认为你需要点“拉”线的能力。

在这种情况下，要得到你想要的，你必须学习访问点、SSID、带宽、DHCP服务器、IP地址池和上百个其他技术细节，你的卖家必须懂这些，而且你必须确保你的卖家懂这些。 从这件糟糕事我被教会需要高级别的微观管理。 今天现代的领导者是否假定雇佣卓越的人才、给他们一些指示，就只是让他们去做? 微观管理是否把聪明的人变成机器人了？

是的，也许。 但这是我的新理论： 在每个公司的高层，至少有一个人真正在乎和真正希望产品和客户体验变得够好。 比如你、我和Ryan。 在这个人的下面有许多层的人，他们中的许多人同样的专业和同样的有才干。
但在你用你的方式贯穿整个组织的某些点时，你发现有些人并没有那么在乎。 对他们而言，这是一个工作。 他们只是想要干完一天的活，并且不要被视频转换的缓慢、Wi-Fi的停顿和吱吱作响的反常的东西搅得心烦意乱。如果你幸运的话，你的公司没有雇佣这样的人。 但从你开始依赖外部供应商的那一分钟起，你把你自己暴露在他们的员工面前，他们中的一些人不可避免的关注不足或所知不足或没有正确的技巧来传递你所尝试分发的重要经验。

我关心， Ryan关心， 我们的雇员关心。 会场管理者可能关心但不一定足够的了解情况。 他雇佣的AV摄影师？ 有时，他们官方性的不在乎，不知道如何做他们的工作，而且真的只是想着去休息。 当你穿过从关心这件事的人们和只想回家的人们那条线的那一秒，就是你必须微观管理的时候。  你必须检查人员和他们的工作、签订意外伤害合同、Wi-Fi无线是否不完美、是否能自由访问。

现在，不要给我犯错。 我希望没有不关心工作的人员蹲在我组织机构图的任何一个地方。 但现实的我知道有时这些人将找到进入我生活的方法。 在我的公司我不雇佣这样的人，但我们拓展到会议和活动时，在我们将用到的剧场和酒席承办人以及互联网提供商中，有些关键人员将脱离我的控制。 现在我希望我们学到如何更好一点的管理这些事情，以便我们永远不要发狂的在早上8点去买延长线。

Joel Spolsky 是FogCreek软件公司的公司创始人和CEO，博客《Joel on Software》的所有者 要寻找他列表的文档，请访问 www.inc.com/keyword/spolsky