You know, I was thinking…
…about Walt Disney picking up trash at Disneyland.
Not because there weren’t custodians. He noticed the napkin before they did, and he couldn’t leave it there. The guy who built the most ambitious entertainment company on earth, crouching next to a bench in Adventureland.
Steve Jobs obsessed over the color of screws inside the Macintosh. Screws nobody would ever see. J. Paul Getty put a pay phone in his mansion so guests would pay for their own long-distance calls. These are not normal behaviors. These are people who could not stop looking at the details.
And our society has decided that’s a bad thing.
Micromanagement is the leadership insult. Right up there with toxic and narcissist. It gets thrown at anyone who pays more attention than you’re comfortable with.
Running Heritage Films, I noticed the difference between micromanagement and being in the details is one thing. Results.
Obsess over details and the output is mediocre, you’re a micromanager. Same obsession, extraordinary output, you’re a visionary.
I am in the details of every Heritage Film we make. Lighting setups. Interview questions. Edit pacing, music cues, color grade.
Is that micromanagement? Maybe. Probably. I don’t care.
People tell me to delegate more and focus on the big picture. That works great if you’re running a SaaS company with interchangeable widgets and a customer who won’t notice if widget #4,307 is slightly off.
I’m not running that company. I’m making something irreplaceable for someone’s family. There is no version of this where I take my hands off the wheel.
The clients who trust us most figure it out about halfway through. Nothing gets past us. Their family’s story is not going to an assembly line. We’re the guys picking up the napkin in Adventureland.
The people who call that micromanagement have never built a park.
Heritage Films produces personal documentary films across the United States. If someone in your family has a story worth keeping, we’d love to hear it.