Doing the Right Things Right

January 5, 2010

Joel Splotsky wrote a great article titled When and How to Micromanage, but we found that the article was less about micromanaging (often a dirty word in business) and more about doing the right things right. In the article, Joel from Fog Creek Software was going to give a presentation in Austin, TX. They were expecting 200 developers to attend; however, the presentation did not go as planned.

Joel used and counted on an event planning business to set up the space. But, unfortunately, due to a few communication mishaps and poor planning, they didn’t have the equipment they needed for the presentation. They had to scramble to get the equipment leaving Joel to do the presentation in a frazzled state. Though the presentation went smoothly, Joel was distracted and concerned about the poor sound quality. If he noticed, the developers in attendance were sure to have noticed as well.

Doing the right things right is key in presentations, whether it is for 2 people or 2,000 people. The same amount of effort and care should go into it, this means following up with outside vendors and making sure that they have everything that they need. Perhaps Joel’s situation could have been prevented had he made a single phone call to a manager at the event planning company to check up on them a week before the presentation. It’s better to catch potential problems early, rather than have to deal with them at the last second. We like to have good faith that once we hand off a project to an employee or a vendor that all will go smoothly and we won’t have to think about it. Perhaps we feel like we are micromanaging if we call someone to check on the status of a project, but if you think of it more as “following up” than micromanaging, it is easier to do. It also opens the lines of communication. If you contact the vendor or employee, they will feel more comfortable contacting you if they have questions or need clarification.