At the airport there are countless occasions when I walk through the book shop and spy some latest self-help book on How to Manage XYZ or 7 Successful Models to Manage XYZ and pause briefly. "Should I get this?" Will it make my life easier? If it makes my life easier, will I be able to save some time and be able to re-invest it into my creative work?
I recall waiting to give the commencement speech at a local art university sitting next to some higher-up wearing a suit. He intimated how as a youth he used to be a punk rocker, was an avid painter, and generally stood *against* the institutions with which he was affiliated. Yet there years later he wore his Brooks Brothers and lamented that he no longer really did anything as a creative professional anymore. Immediately afterwards he gets up in front of the mike and gives some standard institutional line. This event made me wonder thereafter. How do you stay active as a creator but still do the necessary things that can benefit the larger organization?
The solution is to simply outsource the creative activities and brand it as your own. This often happens with scientists and artists as administrators. An active non-administrative career is enabled by having amassed sufficient power to no longer need to do the hands-on activities by oneself, yet still retain the lion's share of the credit. There's nothing wrong with this model of course. It is how the world works. Whether it should work like that or not is certainly not up to me.
Being hands-on runs counter to the need to delegate. Being hands-on and delegating simultaneously implies the annoying phenomenon of micromanaging. Not good. Complete delegation works well when there's mutual respect between the delegator and delegatee. Without such mutual respect however, the delegatee needs to see the delegator in a hands-on mode. This is where a well-intentioned delegator can get into trouble by inadvertently micromanaging the delegatee as a means to gain respect, to only backfire. Sufficiently complex to deem as unsolvable for the moment.
In conclusion, I think I remain a manager that errs on the side of hands-on, with sincere intent to not micromanage, and as an unevolved delegator with respect to my external non-administrative creative work, thus that work tends to ultimately suffer. It is by choice, and certainly not coerced. It is an expression of freedom, within my own constraints.
Posted by maeda at July 22, 2007 11:59 AM