what about those famous founders who hated delegation?
Founders podcast host David Senra loves to tell the tales of founders who refused to hand over control of detailed areas of their business. In Senra’s telling, Steve Jobs reviewed every word of copy for every Apple ad. Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves personally approves every one of the chain’s 100+ new locations each year. Rockefeller adjusted the number of drops of solder used to seal an individual oil can from 40 to 39.
Don’t these examples prove that delegation is for weak leaders who lack the drive and obsessiveness of the greats?
I don’t think so. Here are a few reasons why:
Part of what makes these stories notable is selection bias. There are WAY more things the CEO is not scrutinizing to death. Jobs reviewed copy for every ad. He did not quality control every single iPhone that came from the factory. He did not ring up every single customer at every single Apple Store across the land. It feels a little dumb and obvious to point this out but it’s a truth that gets obscured in the romance of the detail-obsessed CEO.
In at least some of these instances of crazy attention to detail, the CEO/founder is swooping in to give an object lesson and a reminder. This is what our global standard of excellence looks like in this very local domain. 10-time national champion coach John Wooden started each season teaching his players how to tie their shoes. He did not then tie each player’s laces for them the rest of the season. He didn’t shoot the ball for them either - he was the coach. He had to stand on the sidelines. He was illustrating for his players, in a memorable, granular way, “how we do things around here.” This early-season moment of (potentially jarring and patronizing) micro-management was a step toward the inevitable, necessary delegation that was ahead.
Often, these dives into the details are incidental learning opportunities for the CEO, not ongoing exertions of power. Exposure to the front lines and contact with the customer deliver special kinds of data that are hard to grok from a pie chart or spreadsheet.
-eric
