It’s all over the news and if you have missed it – it’s too bad. GoDaddy recently announced their strong support for SOPA/PIPA legislation only to revert their position once public outcry started affecting their bottom line. It is obvious that reversal is a purely a PR stunt and a bad one at it. No one argues that any company is out there to make money, but advocating legislation that, in the long run, will prevent people from making more money is plain stupid. The SOPA support game that GoDaddy has got themselves into is a short small gain, long big loss kind of a deal and any company that has any future plans should have known better than that. Judging by GoDaddy’s recent actions – they don’t. This leads to only one simple conclusion – I cannot afford to trust my domains and domains of my clients to company who can’t forecast their own future within a year or two. Nothing personal, just business – can’t trust the company that doesn’t know what it is doing.

Having said that – I have begun the process of moving my domains away from GoDaddy. First 7 are already on the way to Name.com right now. As you can imagine, transferring some 140 domains away from GoDaddy is a significant expense and is time consuming, however, I feel very strongly about making a move. The process will be gradual – at the end of the month I will move a batch of domains that are scheduled to renew in the next month or two. It will not generate a big lump in GoDaddy’s monthly reports and I probably will not receive a phone call from GoDaddy begging me to return. However, I will feel somewhat better knowing that my money will not fund the idiocy and waste that is SOPA/PIPA.

Happy New Year everyone.

Lately I have been busy managing things. There are many different things that need managing and it takes different kinds of people to manage certain things. Having said all that, everyone, especially in the small business area, have to know (or learn) to manage their own perception. In other words, you have to know how to control the way people perceive you.

Let’s consider the following example. The company has just hired a technical expertise person, who they call ‘developer’ for lack of a better word. Company itself does not maintain any IT staff, rather relying on multiple outside vendors to provide services. Immediately upon the introduction of the ‘developer’ to vendors they went from happy and content to almost hostile. The obvious reason was that from their perspective the ‘developer’ is going to take away from their plate and take over most, if not all, work some of them are doing. Company’s management happily

Now, had this ‘developer’ been introduced to vendors by using his actual title – which included the word “manager” – things would have went a lot easier. Vendors would understand that the real goal of that person coming aboard would be to manage company’s relationship with those very vendors, having a more streamlined way of communicating requirements and processing feedback. In a way, this person should be a single point of contact between vendors and the company, removing or significantly reducing ambiguity and redundancy in processes.

However, by not managing the proper perception of the role, the company management created an obstacle in their relationship with vendors that wasn’t there before. Had the proper perception management applied – there would be no hostility whatsoever.

Managing the way your business partners and vendors perceive you and people who work for you is an important stage in relationship development. A lot of small businesses miss the opportunity to build on this early on and playing a catch-up game to resolve the issues that should not have been there in the first place.

It’s no secret that an interview is a two-way process, at the same time when you are asking your candidate a question and evaluate their performance based on responses the candidate across from you doing exactly the same. Your questions, your reactions and even your body language can tell candidate a lot about you – and shape up his next response.

There are a few things to be aware of. Sometimes you don’t want to pass along anything at all and put on your “poker face”. If your candidate is any good he will immediately realize that and figure you are hiding something. What is it that you are hiding he doesn’t know, but it can make him either too nervous and uncertain if he even gets anywhere near what you are looking for, or too confident that you are trying to hide something bad about the job itself and, as a result, such candidate will pass on your offer even if it is better than your competitor’s.

There are no set rules, of course, but there are few cases that pretty much outline the major mistakes hiring side made during the process. I happened to be interacting with either business that was hiring or coaching the candidates so I have sort of first-hand information on each account.

Case 1: Business advertised a managerial position with some hands on skills required. At the beginning of the interview process candidate was assured that position requires about 30% of actual hands-on process as there are other people who handle it. However, the technical part of the interview was so detailed to one particular aspect of hands-on operations that candidate immediately assumed that this part will be his engagement 100% of the time. As a result, candidate has turned down the job offered to him.

Case 2: During the interview process the hiring manager repeatedly advised candidate on his skills as an interviewee instead of concentrating on actually interviewing the candidate on skills pertaining to the job – according to candidate’s account such comments added up to about 30% of the overall interview time. As a result the candidate has turned down the next round of interviews suggesting picking up someone from the kindergarten so that the hiring manager can fully embrace his father-role in the game.

Case 3: The interview with the hiring manager was immediately followed by two more separate interviews with two members of the team. Questions that two team members were asking, aside from basic concepts, revolved around the same technical problem presented in two slightly varied ways. Candidate decided not to proceed with the interview with third team member on the assumption that the team is looking for a solution to a problem, not another team member, and was using the interviews to extract some fresh ideas from candidates.

Case 4: Business advertised a position that had a split responsibilities between managing outside vendors and hands-on work in house. On the last round of interview he was asked the question of which part of this dual-hat wearing position he would appreciate more, to which he responded that ultimately he would be interested in managing the processes 100% of his time. Business, after very long consideration, decided to go a different route and hire two people to handle both aspects separately. The candidate was not offered a job, since business considered him overqualified for hands-on job and not having enough experience for managerial role.

Case 5: Recruiting company approached a candidate with a consulting position for an undisclosed company that was conducting a “discreet candidate search to replace one of the workers”. The interview, done by one of the consultants, consisted of basic questions on technology as a whole and complaints about the person being replaced. Most notable complaint was “he works like he’s playing chess, sitting there, thinking”. Given that the work required significant amount of mental labor it was very strange that one of the main issues with the worker that was being replaced was that he isn’t typing as fast as the other consultant. Obviously, the candidate turned down the position with words “I don’t want to get fired for needing to stop and think”.

As you can see, there are a few early signs that business is not ready to make a move on hiring a candidate right now or even do not know which qualifications of the candidate are most important. A well prepared candidate can spot these signs and decline a job even though you might want him for your company. Here are a few stop signs that, while not definite red flags, but are taken as “proceed with caution” signs. You might want to avoid them when hiring.

- Hiring manager saying “We will hire when we’ll find the right candidate” – tells the candidate you are not ready to make a move so he can move on.
- Interviewers asking “Have you ever worked with _some tiny little niche of the responsibilities_?” – tells candidate that’s all you really care about.
- Interviewers not asking anything except very basic questions when interviewing for anything above very junior level or asking about minute details without assessing conceptual understanding first – tells candidate someone wrote those questions for you and all he has to do is guess the right answer.
- Interviewers asking for specific area of knowledge or resolution to specific problem while disregarding anything else – tells the candidate you are looking for a solution to an immediate problem and he may not work for you as long as you promised him he would.
- Interviewers asking questions directly from “Worst 100 interview questions” book without even realizing it – tells candidate you simply don’t know what you are doing.

“Anyone who uses the phrase
‘easy as taking candy from a baby’
has never tried taking candy from a baby.” -
R. Hood

Let me start with a personal story. I have an acquaintance who’s freelancing as web developer. More on a creative side, less on programming, but essentially the same web development and web design as we do at Zealus. We’ve known each other for quite some time. This person (let’s call him John) oftentimes asks for my help on projects just to drop me off a few hours or days later. The typical conversation goes the same every time – first a phone call for help, brief description of the project and (almost) begging because John has overestimated his capacity or knowledge. I spend about an hour explaining and pointing out at least two acceptable solutions. John thanks me in the warmest terms. In about 10 – 12 hours (usually early next morning) he’s calling me again to discuss more ideas or ask more questions which takes up another hour. During this conversation John would offer me either to take the project completely off his hands, have me equally involved or make other advances – usually to make me divulge as much thinking as I possibly can regarding my approach to solving his problem. Then, out of nowhere, he would come up with completely different scheme of things that simplifies the problem to one single bare bone and makes my role in a project completely redundant. With elevated cheer and almost theatrical (in a bad sense) happiness he says something about how happy he was to be able to find such a simple solution and how he’s going to nail himself, since it will be so simple. With all that said he hangs up for another year or so.

So why do I always fall for his cries for help. Obviously, I’ve seen this go through time and time again. I know the story inside out and can even predict what his simplified solution would be. How come I keep giving up my time for this schmuck?

Well, first of all, any such story pretty much always ends the same – John has never landed a job from the client he needed someone else’s help with. So I am not the biggest looser here. There are, however, certain takeaways from any such situation that I think are worth spending my time on.

First – it’s a good Q & A practice. You would think you’ve had enough practice answering your other clients’ questions, but you would be wrong. Practice makes perfect, practicing on someone your income doesn’t depend on is saving you money. Think about that for a second – you are getting a free target practice session to polish your Q&A skills topped with fuzzy warm feeling that you are trying to help somebody.

Second – it’s a collective brain storming. Even a way less qualified person that you are is capable of coming up with inventive idea you didn’t think of, twice so – in creative environment. Listen before saying something is the rule of thumb. It’s like digging for diamonds in the rough, but some diamonds are well worth it.

Third – it is good to train your brains on someone else’s problem. Your brain actually functions differently (with a lot less stress) if you don’t have to solve the problem. So you end up with really good ideas and solutions for things you still may encounter in a future – but at least you will be prepared well in advance.

Fourth – I get to hear what other crazy requirements people have for services similar to mine. This way I can think of/create something in advance and beat my competitors by over-delivering before they even start talking. Think about this – if everybody out there wants a forum installed (which actually was the case a few years back) you can do your home work and pair up with great forum developer or designer who specializes in forum skins. When the time comes and you get asked to add a forum to your client’s site – you don’t go on a desperate trip to find someone capable of doing things at any cost, you go to a person you pre-screened for this job already.

Fifth – and the last one for today – is the simple fact that I am selling myself to John every time he asks me something. He may do this for a different reason (to extract information) but what he ultimately hears is that I can do this job for him better than he can do it himself. When the time comes and he gets that big fat client that he would not want to drop at any cost – I’ll be there.

As you can see, even these little things are well worth the trouble, let alone other perks (free coffee?). This is why collaboration – even if you cannot understand or realize its benefits right away – is always better. Once you start collaborating with your peers, you turn them into your agents, instead of head-on competitors. More on that – in the next post, stay tuned.

As I finally got my hands on Google+ invites and started exploring the service it’s inevitable that it was found lacking. No, scratch that, it was found definitely wanting. It is well understood that Google+ is in a very early stages and, in words of some popular blog “they haven’t even put it in the oven yet, so don’t judge the cookie by the dough“.

So consider the following a “please do” list, rather than a list of complaints.
1. Where is my real-time integration with other services, Facebook and Twitter in particular? This is a big one and besides – Google is about “you and them”, while all others are about “them and you”. Had Google come to a bare land, it would be fine if no import/export functionality would exist. Now, I have people following me on Twitter, I have Facebook account and a separate page for my photography business. I also have a bunch of other account more or less social (Blogger, LiveJournal, Flickr – to name a few), so it’s hard to keep them all in sync. Had Google provided the facility to post to them all – I would visit my +Zealus more often than once a week.

2. Picking who to add could be better. I have a list of 500 people none of whom I know and the only reason why they show up is because they have Google+ account. If I want just anybody – I’ll go to Twitter, Circles is a great idea, now let me use it! Especially that Google+ has access to my address book.

3. Sane URL to my profile page. It’s not a big deal, but again – Google+ isn’t coming to a barren land, even Facebook has “vanity” URLs feature.

4. Put in the Wave functionality! Not into chat, but into the main thing! If anything can have the most bang out of Wave technology – it’s Google+, particularly in smaller circles. Example – distributed development team and management brainstorming their next move. Or client in Chicago working with PM in New York and team in Ukraine on a new web site. Possibilities are endless.

5. Let me change that damn color scheme. It’s depressing, boring and totally discouraging me from using Google Plus. I don’t say I want to go Myspace on it, but at least I want different colors.

6. I can haz Pages? I can’t possibly stuff all the things I do into my profile, it would not make any sense. So something similar to Facebook pages (only more sane) would definitely do some good. Now if these pages could have circles… If circles can have circles… Gets kind of scary.

Again, this is just a cursory overlook of all the things that should essentially be a part of GooglePlus, but aren’t. For a brand new social engine – they are must have. Let’s see how long it will take Google to implement the most important ones.

Finally! Added a cross-post feature to the blog, so now you don’t have to use old-school RSS, but you can follow us on twitter: @zealus

It has come to my attention that more and more people are falling for enemy propaganda and start thinking about purchasing a Mac rather than state department approved Windows PC. Don’t fall for enemy propaganda, report uses of Macs to the closes TSA branch or directly to the State Truth Department.

Sorry, it’s a long weekend and this article promises to be rather long, so a bit of humor should lighten the load. Here’s for your consideration, a feature and cost comparison between MacBook Pro 2011 (Sandy Bridge) and Lenovo ThinkPad T-Series. It’s understandable why I picked MBP for comparison. MacBook Pro is a popular machine and it gets even more so – even malware producers have decided to turn their attention to Apple’s platform. But why Lenovo? Well, I’ve been a consistent user of IBM/Lenovo laptops for 5 years now and I know this line very well. Not only that – ThinkPad line of laptops is, by far, the only line that is associated with names IBM and Lenovo.

Another consideration for comparing T-series, rather than anything else, is that it’s the most expensive (aside from W, which currently only offers one W520 model) line, so it should stack up closely with Apple’s premium pricing.

One more reason is that laptop manufacturers don’t make it easy to figure out what line of laptops is supposed to be doing what. I understand it’s a long-term marketing strategy, where manufacturers rely on buzzwords and gimmicks to sell subpar hardware for the same money you could have bought a newer and better machine. HP does it more or less right. Dell is just… well, being Dell:

Acer is trying to beat Dell in terms of telling customers “Nothing to see here, move along”:

Lenovo, coming from serving corporate folk, is trying to bore everyone to death:

Click on the picture to enlarge and try to figure out what Lenovo laptops target what market and how are they different. Now, imagine how much work their marketing department has to do to keep all that somewhere in their crazy minds. Borderline insane.

Now, having said all that – Apple got three tiers of MacBook Pros: 13 inch, 15 inch and 17 inch screens, with two choices of CPU for 13 and 15 inch models and single choice for 17 inch. What I will try to do is match Lenovo Thinkpad specs as close to those of MBP as possible and see what kind of machine we end up with. The issue here is that Lenovo Thinkpads come in as many as 7 (SEVEN!) different flavors. It’s kind of hard to pick and choose which one to compare, so I have opted to compare T series against 13 and 15 inch MBP models. It came as a surprise to me to find that Lenovo has discontinued a 17 inch model offering – especially that I own a Thinkpad W701, which is a 17 inch laptop. Therefore I will use Lenovo Essential G770 model, even though it is not a configurable model – i.e. all hardware specs are set when you pick a model, you can’t customize anything, but warranty and accessories.

Therefore the matching will be done as follows:
13 inch MacBook Pro vs. Lenovo Thinkpad T420/T420i
15 inch MacBook Pro vs. Lenovo Thinkpad T520
17 inch MacBook Pro vs. Lenovo Essentials G770

Since Thinkpads don’t come by default with Bluetooth and built-in camera, all Lenovo’s were configured with these additional options. The closest CPU, video resolution and hard drive capacity were picked where exact match wasn’t possible. Additionally, all Thinkpads come with Windows Home Premium 64 bit. A default 6-cell battery was chosen for all models as well as all other options were left at their default values since we are comparing “out of the box” configurations.

Here’s the resulting comparison table:

As you can see in 13 inch category I had to choose lower T420i over T420 to match it against lowest MBP model – simply because Lenovo does not offer Core i5-2410M in regular T420 models. In both cases Lenovo’s offering slightly better in terms of screen size, resolution, hard drive speed (Lenovo’s 7200RPM is noticeably faster than Apple’s 5400RPM offering), number of available USB ports and price. Speaking of price difference – $270 on lowest models and $240 on a step-up – makes it a big difference, at least in my book. Getting laptop with better specs for around $250 less should be a strong point against picking up Apple’s MacBook Pro 13 inch models.

In 15 inch category things did not quite match up either. For some reason Lenovo does not offer 750GB hard drive for T520, however, they still have 7200RPM disks against 5400RPM from Apple, which inherently makes their default system faster. Lenovo is a little less flexible in terms of graphics offering NVIDIA NVS 4200M Graphics with Optimus Technology with 1GB of memory as the only option on T520 Thinkpads. If you are buying T520 mostly for office-related tasks this is obviously an overkill. Lenovo, however, offers 1900×1200 resolution screens on its 15 inch laptops, something that Apple’s MacBook Pros definitely lacking. On the lower end the 2 CPUs are a bit different (Core i7-2635QM vs Core i7-2630QM, you can see side-by-side comparison on Intel’s web site), but for real world use it shouldn’t matter much. Price gap, however – $460 on lower model and $775 on step-up – makes a world of difference. Having over $700 in cost advantage can allow you to configure Lenovo system that will beat MacBook Pro in every category. As a matter of fact – $2,034 will buy you a T520 with Core i7-2820QM Processor (2.30GHz, 8MB L3), 8GB RAM, 15.6″ FHD (1920 x 1080) LED Backlit Anti-Glare Display and 500GB 7200RPM hard drive. Should you opt out of upgrading memory while ordering and get your 8GB somewhere else, you could still end up with cash to spare for an additional 750GB 7200RPM hard drive plus Ultrabay dock. Again, Lenovo’s offering in 15-inch category beats Apple by even wider margin.

Lenovo has discontinued their 17-inch W7xx series, therefore a direct comparison with premium series is not possible. As of right now, Lenovo only offers one model (Essentials G770) in 17 inch segment. I hope it’s a sign of better things to come (IPS screens maybe?). However, since Lenovo doesn’t have a premium machine to match against 17 inch MacBook Pro I used whatever is available at the moment. You can see that G770 offers the same low-end i5-2410M CPU as do 13 inch models, it sports sub-par 1600×900 pixel screen, AMD Radeon HD 6650M 1GB video and slow 750GB 5400RPM hard drive. Obviously, in terms of performance it’s no match for 17 inch MacBook Pro. However, if you look at the price and unless it turns out that Lenovo components are dead soldered to motherboard – you still have an option to upgrade – i5-2410M supports FCBGA1023 and PPGA988 sockets, so there could be other options available, depending on motherboard design. Nevertheless, I still believe Apple summarily wins 17 inch category because opponent failed to show up. If I could speculate a bit, I would imagine Lenovo’s W720 machine to sport a configuration of Core i7-2820QM Processor (2.30GHz, 8MB L3), 8GB RAM (expandable to 16GB), NVIDIA Quadro 1000M Graphics with 2GB DDR3 Memory, 17.1 FHD (1920 x 1080) and 750GB of 7200RPM storage (with RAID options – my current W701 has 2 HDD bays and supports RAID). I would imagine the cost to be in the vicinity of $2,500 and this would be on the level with 17 inch MacBook Pro. This configuration would be better in terms of specifications, but hardly different in terms of price, so the only major selling point for Lenovo would be expandability and graphics card. This, essentially, could have been a tie, but such Lenovo system does not exist.

To summarize it all up – if you are shopping for 13 to 15 inch laptop, then Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops are consistently more expensive and provide a lot less computing power for the same amount of money when compared to premium line of Lenovo’s Thinkpad T-series laptops. If you opt for cheaper lines of Lenovo Thinkpad laptops (S, SL or Edge) or other lines (IdeaPad, Essentials) – your savings could be even bigger. In other words – Apple’s 15-inch laptops are the biggest rip-off, comparing to Lenovo’s premium laptops. In 17 inch category Lenovo does not offer anything of a value, therefore 17 inch Apple MacBook Pro has no competition here.

There is an interesting read on O’Reilly Radar today, called “Why the cloud may finally end the reign of the work computer”. The author, Jonathan Reichental, Ph.D., brings up an interesting topic – what if workers were allowed to bring their own computers to work. This will bring costs of support up. But since the advent of the cloud it won’t matter: “With the application, data, business logic, and security all provisioned in the cloud, the computer really does simply become a portal to information and utility.”

As far as I know (and I have only worked in IT for 15 years) there are two major factors that push companies to provide their own computers to workers: data security and maintenance costs. Somehow it is widely believed that if you scare your users into believing that all those viruses are out there hunting for you only because you are not “doing work” and if you stick to software on the company-issued hardware then you are magically safe. No virus will touch you because you are “doing work”. The company data is safe because we all “doing work”.

Let’s talk about data security first.

Scene 1.
When I work as a consultant at the company bringing my own laptop is either highly encouraged or required. If I am an employee at the same company, bringing my own laptop may result in what they call a “disciplinary action”. Oh, the irony.

Can you steal sensitive company data? Yes, especially if you are a contractor and therefore have less ties with a company. Just copy whatever the hell you want on your very own contractor laptop and do whatever.

Scene 2.
HIPAA-compliant institution, no one (including consultants) is allowed to use anything, but bulk, ugly and oh-so-last-century laptops provided by IT department. Each laptop has a (disabled) hardware encryption chip and a hard drive encrypted by some software. Yep, that’s how clueless the IT department is, but that’s not the point. Every single useful web site is blocked by the firewall – web mail, hosting providers, you name it. What do you think the chance of BYOC there? Zero or less.

Can you steal sensitive company data? Still yes – just take your laptop home a few times and don’t connect to company’s VPN when you hook it up. Even if CD burning or USB writing is disabled – you can still e-mail pretty much anything on your laptop to your own self.

As you can see there is little of what you can do from an IT prospective that would ensure the safety of the data. There is nothing technically sophisticated in each scene. The safety of the data relies not on technology, but on people employing it. Once C-level executives figure that out (in only hundred years or so) – no one would care what is it that you are using to get your job done.

Now, part two, maintenance cost. That’s a real one, boys and girls. It is indeed true that company buys hardware at a special discount, so if you see that brand new Dell for $600 your company may be buying the same exact model for anywhere between $300 and $500 – depending on company size, aggressiveness of Dell’s sales person and myriad of other factors. It is also a big deal to support all this hardware and it’s no joke – with all the in-house applications it becomes a nightmare to test that brand new billing system developed in shiny .NET 4.0 on your Accounting 5-year old clunkers.

Here comes the cloud, as the author of the original material says, and everything is magically working again. I say – it worked a long time ago without any cloud – just recall magic words “remote desktop”, “citrix” or even ancient “application server”. Yep, I remember environment with 50 users running the same DOS program on the server via some sort of remote terminal connection – each got their own instance, of course. Today, with virtualization, it so damn easy to have a truly unified workstation across any number of workers – it’s not even worth discussing. Just do it, back it up each night and fuhgeddaboudit.

See, ma, no hands. I mean – no clouds. Bright and sunny. And, what’s the most important part of it – no data leaves the company, even if you DO take your laptop home. Some added benefit of security, right?

No matter what tech bloggers are saying each time Google releases another feature – Google does not compete with Facebook. It’s pretty simple if you look at “meta” levels of each. Who’s the center of attention for each service. What is the first thing that comes up by default in each service. What tools and services do they provide.

Google – personalized search, your profile, your e-mail, your contacts, your calendar, your pictures. Sprinkled with a magic dust of “share” buttons.

Facebook – friends’ activity, shared photos, events, friend-a-palooza, groups (with actual people!), pages (which are another way to name simple forums).

Google is about “you” while Facebook is about “them”.

Google cannot compete with Facebook for obvious reasons that it lacks tools and methods to connect “you” with “them”. Because in Google’s ecosystem there is no “them”, there are millions and millions of “you”. They send each other e-mails, schedule appointments and occasionally share a picture or two, but it doesn’t create “them” out of millions of “you”s.

It doesn’t mean Google didn’t try. Trying they are – just look at the Buzz and their latest integration of Profiles. Buzz is the most cumbersome friend activity feed I’ve ever seen, even 10-year old LiveJournal still does it better. Just to give you one good reason – no matter how many people I follow on Buzz, you know who stays on top all the time? Matt Cutts, that’s who! Because of the sheer number of comments he gets he stays on top (his post is bumped up any time someone leaves a comment) and all my friends who are a lot more important to me (no offense, Matt) are lagging distant second. Would I use Buzz? No, not with this flavor of things.

Take another example – Blogger. Google bought the service back in 2003 and did their regular techno-dance around it until 2006. After that all the changes were primarily cosmetic – adding new templates, updated editor and so on. The most social place of all gets editor updates and Google Docs integration… unbelievable! Ever tried to leave a comment on this thing? LiveJournal is still using their WYSIWYG editor from the mainframe era and they are more social than Blogger!

Want more? Take a look at Picasa. Again, sharing photos is one hell of a social madness – look no further than Flickr. Yahoo is checking itself into elderly care, yet Flickr is kicking it as hard as they ever did. Now, when you look at Picasa – it’s not even a decent photo storage place, let alone a social interaction tool.

Again, Google is about “you” while Facebook is about “them”, there is no competition going on – unless you call a bunch of “share” buttons a competition to Facebook. The two ecosystems are going two separate roadways, it’s just when some people see trucks moving on another road they tend to think there’s a junction ahead. Nope, keep looking, there is no junction yet – not any time soon.

You have probably heard the “If you want something done right – you do it yourself” adagio times and times again. You agree and when you hire help you tend to tell in every little detail how stuff should be done, because that’s exactly how you would do it. You did it thousands of times, so it should be perfect, right? Wrong!

There’s hardly any other way of management as ineffective and destructive as micromanagement. Sometimes a complete absence of management would do better. Imagine you micromanage a group of 3 people, whom you tend to micromanage. That’s basically doing their jobs together with them. So if each one of them has a standard 40 hour work week that alone is going to 120 hours a week. Add your own responsibilities which should add up to another 40 hours per week and you arrive at 160 hours per week. Which leaves you precisely 8 hours per week to sleep, eat and have a life. The math is amazing, isn’t it?

Aside from this obvious exaggeration there are more issues with micromanagement than you might think. Once you’re comfortably sure none of your employees can make a single step without consulting with you, you can be sure you will get nagged every 5 minutes with requests to validate everyone’s output and the inevitable “Done, now what?”. That is, of course, if your employees won’t “forget” to ask than to have a few precious minutes without that authoritarian “What are you working on now?” questioning.

This constant nagging leaves you no chance to concentrate on your own work that you do as their manager or supervisor – acquiring new tasks, planning, measuring risks and so on, every single moment of your time will be devoted to distributing tasks, controlling the process and validating the output. This will also lead to huge waste, justified by “He didn’t tell me what to do, so I’m doing nothing”. True, why do anything at all if all you hear back is “Did I tell you to do that?”

Micromanagement creates no incentive to work efficiently, given the amount of waste obvious to any one with a bit of common sense. It creates a stressful work environment for both the employer and employee. It hurts productivity from multiple angles and creates an almost Orwellian state of mind as you are being watched and told what to do almost every minute. Yet, many of small business owners tend to implement this kind of management style, because they just know how to do it right. They did it a thousand times over, so they should know better. Right?