I saw a post on LinkedIn that said, “Micromanaging is a sign of a lack of trust. If you don’t trust your team, you will never achieve great things.”

This is exactly the kind of thing that gets tons of likes. Unfortunately, I think it’s highly misleading and taken literally will lead you to terrible outcomes.

Some of the assumptions built into the statement:

• All of your team members are trained to the same levels
• The product vision is clear
• The framework/process for working is consistent and understood
• Your business partners are also on the same page.
• Everyone’s role is clearly defined with no overlap or confusion.
• Everyone is aligned to the same timelines and metrics for success

If all of these things are true, then you a lucky manager indeed. In every company and every team I have ever seen, these assumptions are spotty at best. These are the fundamental problems a manager is supposed to address.

I’m going to focus on just the first bullet for the purposes of this post. However, every one of those things mentioned requires active management. You can’t just let those assumptions be false and shrug your shoulders.

Training

When you start working somewhere as a manager, you will find a varying degree of capabilities on your team. Some people will be very able to perform a task with minimal oversight. They may even do more/better than you could have in their shoes.

On the other hand, you will have other people who, left to their own devices, will yield substandard results. Everyone knows people on their team like this. It’s dishonest to claim everyone is great at their jobs.

This is especially true of people new to the workforce. They may have energy, raw talent, and theoretical training, but real world experience is something everyone needs to develop.

My first trainee

The first designer I trained was Atanasio at Marketo. He actually transferred from the support team and was interested in design. I told him to read About Face by Alan Cooper, which he devoured in under 2 weeks. (Very impressive!)

After talking about the book, I sat him next to me and we worked on every project together, I looked at his screen and he looked at mine. Every step was shared in the spirit of showing him how it all worked.

I certainly made mistakes, but I believe he was trained well to be a B2B product designer and later an excellent manager in his own right.

The key question is “What’s the difference between training and micromanagement?” I was certainly in every detail with Atanasio in that first year. Was I micromanaging or was I training?

I have long complained about the state of higher education as a training mechanism for new workers. Every person I know learned more on the job than in school. So what are you supposed to do? Just trust that the new employee will do a great job? This will not lead to great results and I think it is a poor manager who lets a someone in their team linger in this state.

Group Training

When I was at Treasure Data, I hired 8 designers at the same time. They were all new to design; first or second job out of school. I hired them because they were smart, talented, energetic, and open minded.

I’m the first year, I was sitting next to them reviewing every detail of their work. Tiffany sat next to me and heard me say to “name your layers!” at least once a week.

People who don’t name their layers are self-centered monsters.

Glen Lipka, Hot Take #8

After about a year, I was mostly hands off. I had trained them in the process and methods of design and could trust them to lead the PMs and Engineers in the solution design aspect of product development.

Because they all started at (roughly) the same time , they also learned from each other. This was a happy coincidence that is not always possible, but it certainly helped them all be on the same page. If you have new trainees, I highly recommend that you put them together as much as possible.

Fading into the background

Like Homer Simpson, I wanted to fade gently into the bush.

The key is to do this gradually. You can’t be training in the details and then just ghost the new employee. I often feel like it is teaching your kid to ride a bike. At first, you are holding them up, then you are running along side of them, and finally they can do it on their own.

In the beginning, you often are just showing them what to do. But as time passes, you have to let go and let them make mistakes. Mistakes are not the enemy. They are the way we learn.

Learn fast – try things and see how they go. Learning means never failing.

Glen Lipka, Hot Take #44

Continuous Training

No one should get complacent with their skills. No manager should say their subordinate is great and therefore does not need training. Everyone wants their career to grow. You may have taught them how to use Figma, but did you teach them how to lead others in a direction? Have you taught them how to handle a problem partner in engineering or PM? The role of manager is not to do/direct all of the work, but rather create the circumstances to train people to grow and execute.

One day, I will go back to my theoretical book of how to design B2B products and this will likely be a section. Until then, a short blog post will have to suffice.