Mickey Drexler, the former CEO of Gap, told Yahoo Finance he learned from former Apple CEO Steve Jobs that micromanaging can be effective in getting customers what they want and deserve.
One of the great debates in leadership is how much managing is too much. Psychologists argue micromanagement is harmful, saying it stifles creativity, dampens motivation, and reduces productivity.
But some of the greats in business have shown micromanaging can lead to great success. Take Steve Jobs, for example. The former CEO of Apple, who died in 2011 from pancreatic cancer, continues to be revered as one of the greatest leaders in business history, but he’s also among some of the most famous micromanagers.
“He’s a corporate dictator who makes every critical decision—and oodles of seemingly noncritical calls too, from the design of the shuttle buses that ferry employees to and from San Francisco to what food will be served in the cafeteria,” Adam Lashinsky wrote in a Fortune article about Jobs published just about a month before his death.
But Jobs and other business leaders have shown micromanaging works and that it gets a bad rap. In an episode of the Opening Bid podcast with Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi, former Gap CEO Mickey Drexler made the case for this management practice, saying it was one of his major leadership takeaways from working with Jobs on the board of Apple.
