Micro-Management Adds Costs
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but in reality it always seems to be somebody’s surprise. Whoa, micro-management adds costs to your project? And why shouldn’t it? And that cost will blow out with every added micro-managed level of the conversation. Sign-off just got a lot more difficult.
Have you ever been in the position where you’re contracted to do work but rather than trust your tastes the people contracting you get obsessed about insignificant detail? This picture for approval, that new paragraph, everything needing sign-off from your direct contact or their micro-managing overlord on a minute-by-minute basis. It can be a frustrating struggle through thick mud in very loose gumboots; and it happens. Relinqishing control isn’t what managers traditionally see themselves doing. However, if you’re sought out for contract work don’t you think there needs to be just a little faith in your abilities?
Here’s how the story runs… first you get the task outline but then when you have a question it has to be fielded up one organisational level just to be clarified. Similarly, you write some content and it goes up the hierarchy for approval. Now this takes time and money – for one, the manager’s time is money. For two, you sit back waiting for responses from people who are not always immediately available and if you’re anything like me you put that semi-productive hour onto your bill. I refuse to be at someone’s beck and call for an eight hour day only to be paid for the 3 hours they were available for feedback. Especially when it was their administrative demand that I be micro-managed. The other option would be to send off the request, immediately drop their work for the day, and resume work for another client until close of business – immediate attention deserves adequate payment. An hours pay for an hours work. Work * hours = pay. Simple.
Anyway, it’s one of those obvious things. If you’re micro-managing your contractors then you’re burning money at both ends of a finite wick. Do you really need to approve every single image, the wording of every single sentence? Is it cost effective to sit on the other end of GMail telling someone to push that pixel over to the right and back again? Why not just deliver a quality brief and review when the work is done, without preconceived expectation. The big question – no the ONLY question – is whether the designer met the brief. Because once you get bogged down in trying to hold another human beings hands and make them your personal puppet it would be faster to do it yourself.
Brought to you by the Make Money not Puppet organisation. Micro-management gets expensive, wake up to that.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Good points Steven, micro-managing from clients can be a real obstacle for some projects getting done on time and within budget.
This can be avoided if we, as designers/developers, take charge from the outset and remind the client that it is a project and we’re not just designing/developing but also ‘project managing’ too! That might raise a few eye-brows among some clients (‘What, they don’t just do design?!’) and some clients might welcome it.
As you’ve stated: we’re being hired for experience, skills and know-how…so the client should really put some faith in us to deliver (that’s what they’re paying us for right?)
I’m going to bookmark this article mate because I can see myself referring to it later at some point, haha!
January 8th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Matt, there are also times when they don’t really see that they’re trying to micro-manage. Especially if they’re that “hands on” kind of manager or small business owner, so it’s not always as easy as pointing out that they’re doing it.
But the two things they almost all seem to share is shock that you charged more (as long as you’re working by the hour, anyway) and a growing resentment that they might feel about you “needing micro-management” from their end.
Step 1: Refuse to show them every little detail from the start, just the defined deliverables.
But that doesn’t always work. The people I’m thinking of and not naming in this article were absolute legends at this requirement.
Yes it’s a handy article to point some client’s to, Matt. Thanks.