Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

by Laszlo Bock

This advice may seem out of place, given that I’ve just devoted much of this chapter to explaining why managers should not have authority. But hierarchy in decision-making is important. It’s the only way to break ties and is ultimately one of the primary responsibilities of management. The mistake leaders make is that they manage too much. As Olivier Serrat of the Asian Development Bank wrote, “Micromanagement is mismanagement.… [P]eople micromanage to assuage their anxieties about organizational performance: they feel better if they are continuously directing and controlling the actions of others—at heart, this reveals emotional insecurity on their part. It gives micromanagers the illusion of control (or usefulness). Another motive is lack of trust in the abilities of staff—micromanagers do not believe that their colleagues will successfully complete a task or discharge a responsibility even when they say they will.”108 Instead, decisions should be made at the lowest possible level of an organization. The only questions that should rise up the org chart are ones where, Serrat continues, “given the same data and information,” more senior leaders would make a different decision than the rank and file.