by Michael Greaney

Created on: May 13, 2009

My grandfather's brother-in-law worked (as did my grandfather) for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. One of his favorite stories involved a problem up the line one day when his immediate supervisor was out of the office. My great uncle fixed the problem and, when the supervisor returned to the office, reported what he had done. The supervisor commented that my uncle had done exactly the right thing in a timely and necessary fashion, possibly even saving lives in the process. Then the supervisor spoke the phrase that my great uncle said had been hanging over his head all day long, and for which the supervisor was notorious up and down the line: "Yes, you did the right thing, you saved the company a lot of trouble and money . . . but why didn't you do it MY way?"

Far too many owners and managers are uncomfortable trusting the people who work for or with them. Nothing, in their opinion, can ever be right unless they do it themselves, or unless they stand over the other people every moment. Sometimes this urge to micromanage becomes an obsession to the point that the manager or owner can't complete or even start his or her own work, to the detriment of the company as a whole.

This general mistrust seems to be rooted in an unfortunate elitism. It helps convince people "in charge" that those dumbos on the line or in the office can't possibly be as smart or as competent as someone with the manager's or owner's life experience and education. (This can also go the other way. A manager or owner who made his or her way in the world educated by the "school of hard knocks" in many cases gives in to the temptation to hold college-educated people in contempt, thinly-veiled or otherwise.)

One CEO of the elitist, mistrustful school got the surprise of his life many years ago. He related in an interview for a magazine article (that I have, unfortunately, lost in the intervening years) that he had formerly been in the habit of taking regular strolls through the office, looking (literally) over people's shoulders as they tried to work, making certain everybody was busy, and verifying that the work in process was up to his personal standards.

Then one day, completely by chance, he discovered that one of the office staff was an expert in some field in which the CEO had a passing interest; it was grand opera or sky-diving or something, it doesn't matter. He was so intrigued by this discovery that, out of curiosity, he took an informal poll of the staff . . . and

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