Original Source: Fast Company. Permission granted to feature their article. Read it here.
I’ve been watching Welcome to Chippendales, the Hulu series about the innovative, yet ill-fated, all-male dance revue that took the 1980s club scene by storm. In the midst of this tale of intrigue are all sorts of business lessons. Primarily ones about what not to do as a leader.
Chippendales founder Somen “Steve” Banerjee was a controlling micro-manager, who was unable to allow the complementary strengths of his staff to shine. This led to his demise and the downfall of the entire enterprise.
Here’s the relevance to you: In a world where we are inundated with constant change, the last thing you need to be for your colleagues is a micromanager, constantly breathing down their necks (ahem, Elon Musk). If you want to be in the lead for the future of work, make sure you are behaving like a macromanager.
Historically, since the Industrial Revolution, productivity metrics have been output based. But in a future work scenario where basic tasks are taken over by automation, robots, or AI, it behooves us to shift our productivity metrics from output- or time-based measures, to value-based productivity measures.
Macromanagement is a leadership style based on trust, active listening, and incentivizing your teammates to take the lead. Value-based productivity outperforms time- or output-based productivity consistently, and requires macromanagement.
Here are four ways you can begin to practice macromanagement leadership styles.
SHIFT PRICING STRUCTURES
Move from time-based pricing to value-based pricing when quoting work at the proposal stage. A value-based approach requires you to gather data about a new client’s current costs (tangible and intangible) and connect the dots to future realized savings and gains that you can deliver.
Remember, as your expertise develops over time, shouldn’t you be spending less time on work and delivering greater value? If that’s true (which I believe it is), then sticking to time-based pricing would mean you bring in less revenue over the course of your career.
In a value-based pricing scenario, your proposals might begin to reference value in the following ways: “A 5% increase in new patent development,” or “Topline revenue increases by 1%, or $14 million, due to earned revenue because of new IP . . . .”
REEXAMINE WHERE AND HOW GENERATIVE THINKING HAPPENS
When and where people work matters—and requires a culture of trust. Productivity expert Cal Newport has written about the need for downtime and silence for deep work. Often, we are mistaking rigidity for rigor in our work environments. They are not the same.
Rigor requires focus and skill mastery and responds to shifts in our external environments. Rigidity is not adaptive. Allow your team the space and the time to do deep thinking on their own terms and space in order to produce more generative and expansive work.
CHALLENGE YOUR OWN PROXIMITY BIAS
Is it true that your team will do their best work because they are near you? Or because you can pop over into their office and see them? Really?
While in-person touch points in work cycles are incredibly important in order to collaborate in real time or to check our own assumptions, experimenting with proximity is important. A September 2022 Gallup report found “the greatest advantages of hybrid work . . . are: improved work-life balance, more efficient use of time and control over work hours and work location, burnout mitigation, and higher productivity.”
OPTIMIZE TECH THAT ALLOWS WORKERS TO HAVE MORE AGENCY
The promise of great technology is that it will allow more room in our workspaces to do what makes us uniquely human. In October 2022, I participated in a Future of Work panel sponsored by Seramount and walked away with some great insights from Anna Oakes of Quartz, Rajesh Anandan of Ultranauts, Priya Krishnan of Bright Horizons, and Jason Resendez of The National Alliance for Caregiving.
Specifically, Anandan, the cofounder of Ultranauts, a quality engineering firm staffed by neurodivergent people, shared some great tech-enabling tactics. For example: using a Trello board where people can anonymously post questions to the boss; or, setting up virtual hangout spaces on Slack (e.g. call one “#watercooler”).
Take this short 5-question quiz to determine whether or not you are a macromanager:
- I encourage my team to ask questions. Y/N
- I incentivize my team with time and/or money to dream up big new ideas. Y/N
- I require my team to attend conferences in sectors outside of our norm or comfort zone to come up with new ideas. Y/N
- I like it when younger or newer team members lead meetings—in fact, I require it on a rotating basis and learn a lot by taking a back seat. Y/N
- Not only do I give regular reviews to my team for feedback, but I’ve also instituted a feedback-loop system, in which I receive reviews from them on how I’m doing. Y/N
If you answered yes to at least three of these questions, then you are well on your way to being a macromanager. You are implementing behaviors that set yourself and your team up for a work environment that thrives on trust, curiosity, and experimentation.
Natalie Nixon, PhD, is a creativity strategist, global keynote speaker, the author of the award-winning The Creativity Leap: Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation, and Intuition at Work, and the president of Figure 8 Thinking.
