Many colleagues would disagree, but I find the micromanaging attitude of CEOs to be extremely negative.
If you did your job right, you have people that are much more experienced than yourself. The only smart move is to coordinate them and, at best, give your opinion.
I don't really google "what's the best suturing technique" and demand my doctor to follow those exact instructions.
>If you did your job right, you have people that are much more experienced than yourself.
"You hired me as your UX expert. I use A/B trials, prior trials, studies, and knowledge I've pieced together over the past 20 years." The question of "What are you even paying me for if you're going to ignore my advice?" is one I'd love to ask but fear getting fired for pointing it out.
The alternative to micro-managing is asking for the impossible [0]. Which also happens frequently. I was once asked to make a transparent .jpg because .png are "too heavy". I had to explain how .jpg's work, tell them I could make it a .gif, but that the .png compressed better and would be more lightweight than the .gif. They insisted on the .jpg at which point I gave up, matched the jpg's background color to the blue background they had and saved it as a .jpg. Which turned out to still be a bigger file size than the equivalent .png.
> If you did your job right, you have people that are much more experienced than yourself. The only smart move is to coordinate them and, at best, give your opinion.
I wish people felt this way about economics, instead of constantly voicing their "market solves everything, government is bad" opinions and trying to apply econ101 solutions to complex problems.
The problem with that is that as a CEO, you are responsible for the results. So you cannot ignore the problems just because one of your employees says it is the correct way.
My approach is to hold myself from telling the designers what to do, and instead tell them what the problem is and let them come up with a solution.
The Oatmeal and Clients From Hell have been mentioned. I'd submit 27bslash6[0] (of "Missing Missy" fame) as a drier take on the meme. Quite entertaining if the email chain is your thing.
Is anyone else tired of the mega cliche fumbling boss who makes the designer do extra work by changing his mind? Honestly this type of stuff irritates me because it shows you don't especially know what you're doing, because you can't get the other person to see your vision. Part of the job is learning to work with people who can't quite "see" it and need your help. In 10+ years of designing and programming sites for clients, I've never once had a situation like this. If someone is stuck on a bit, I help them, or discover and piece out what they really want by talking with them, finding many examples of what they do like, explaining the UI/UX choices from a usability point of view, etc.
In Corporate America, this sort of interaction is completely routine, especially when talking with a single business analyst who's supposed to be representing a whole team. Much of the time, the BA imposes their own requests on-top of their team's. While that's fine, much of the time that is spent on the requirements gets wasted because, after showing off the project to the rest of the business team, they have their own requests that refute what the BA wanted in the first place!
While this would all be solved if requirements were decided as a team, much of the time that's not the case. Alas.
Yeah. You can do pretty well if it's just one boss, but when you have to somehow answer to everyone, and every meeting leads to two meetings with new people recursively until the end of time, there's not a whole lot you can do.
You're thinking like a single person dealing with a single person.
I have to deal with an army of VPs spread out over a dozen sub organizations who each have their own idea of what should be done both in the real world and in the software world. You can't teach all of them. I don't even know who most of them are. And all I get is filtered demands through another dozen teams who try to interpret what the VP's latest vague demands really mean, and often fear choosing a detail for fear they will be wrong. And then I have to write something in code which is likely wrong because I have no freaking clue WTF it's supposed to do and get dinged because I didn't meet a schedule agreed to a year ago based on whatever the hell the VPs wanted back then.
It’s important for the brand to look and feel human. We’re a tech company. Tech is the opposite of human, so we have to make the brand human. Humans attract humans. I’ve got some human ideas. What if our website is just covered in skin? Please, someone mock up the skin site. Play around with it. Make sure these humans know how human we are.
So, for the logo. What if it’s something random? Something unexpected? Hear me out.
What’s minimal, human, wordless, and edgy? I’ll tell you what…a toe. Exactly, it’s brilliant. I’ve mocked up a few designs myself. I’ve attached them to this email, and I have to say, they’re pretty damn good. I’d love to see 20 more options for the toe by EOD, but we’ll probably go with one of mine, but do it anyway.
Edit: the good ones are where the client asks for a slight change, acknowledges it but doesn't want it to be quite so much, then is happy, but the designer didn't do a thing for any of it, aside from maybe changing a filename.
[Int. CEO, at least 2 VPs, Creative Director, Designer. In all glass conference room huddled behind a designer, looking at his screen. Everyone in the open plan office shifty eyes, trying to eavesdrop.]
CEO: Who approved that?
Designer: You did...
CD: ...at the last review.
CEO: I did? Well ...it needs to change. I was thinking...
"I know I said I loved it yesterday, but looking at it now, I hate it."
I usually ignore this kind of humor, but wow, there is a non-zero chance that this is an accidentally verbatim quote of an old boss of mine.
(Before you think I am talking about you, ask yourself: has your interest level in the Transformers franchise ever exceeded healthy levels for a grown man by two sigmas? Well there is your answer.)
Jonathan Stark on The Freelancers Show podcast has been harping on the answer to this issue for multiple episodes. He figures out the intended result of the project and makes a fixed price bid, paid in advance. If the client wants to change something, they have to answer "How does this increase the conversions that is the desired result of the project?", or whatever. And if they really want it changed, then project 1 is put on ice, and an entirely new project 2 is spun up with a new fixed price bid, paid in advance. Of course, Stark refuses to work with many clients where he can't get a sufficient level of trust before project start. These ideas are spread over many episodes, but here is a recent one with relevant show notes:
I think CEOs where companies are versatile and skillful in the core operations of the business (think Bill Gates, Satya Nadella) will always have a huge advantage over companies led by people only proficient general purpose management and general purpose operations research.
The ideal role of a CEO is "Head of Operations + Chief Architect". His workflow should be top-down (market assessment) => bottom-up (product design) => top-down (operations management) => bottom-up (operations) reloop.
The more distance he is able to travel between the bottom and the top, and the faster he can do it, the greater the competitive advantage of the company is.
The CEO of this satire seems to be rather on top of his business ;)
I used to work at a two design/web agencies and left the design agency (as a developer) because of emails and discussions like this. For about 3 years I kept wondering "Is this every developer job? Turning accordion into dropdown, then into a grid, then into an endless scroll FAQ?" Finally I got a job working backend on enterprise software and have never looked back.
This thread is the first thing to remind me of all the stress I endured just a few years back.
My question is, how do we change this? That work was fun, but the high stress from either directors or CEOs or clients constantly changing their mind was overwhelming.
uhm, no, sorry - the field is now called Business Intelligence according to all the job postings I keep seeing when it used to just be Report Writer (who could do his/her own stored procedures / queries).
I once spent 8 holes on a golf course taking sh*t from some farmers because my Dad pointed out I had done one of the documents they got. I felt triplely damned.
If you did your job right, you have people that are much more experienced than yourself. The only smart move is to coordinate them and, at best, give your opinion.
I don't really google "what's the best suturing technique" and demand my doctor to follow those exact instructions.