The Tattle Button
I’ve developed a good way to identify an organization that is micromanaged. It doesn’t involve complex measurements, statistics, charts, or KPI tracking dashboards. It merely requires looking at the name in the “cc” field in e-mails within that department. If you consistently see a manager’s name in there, even in e-mails dealing with mundane day-to-day operations issues, you could be in trouble.
I’m not an expert on management but I’ve worked for quite a few different companies. I’ve worked for great managers, good managers, and bad managers and in my experience, as an engineer, the best managers are the ones who take a high-level, hands-off approach to managing their team. A great manager will delegate responsibilities, tasks, and projects to team members and only get involved when there is a major problem or decision to be made. If you don’t have staff that you can say I need this project done at this specific time and step back, you need better staff. When a manager requires that their staff CC them on all e-mail communications as a way of tracking performance on a project, they can actually end up negatively impacting performance and slowing down progress. A much easier way of tracking performance is using proper project management skills. Status updates, checkpoints, and target dates are all much easier to keep track of than sifting through hundreds of e-mails. If it looks like the schedule is slipping, then it’s time to get involved and find out what the problems are. This way employees won’t be stifled by constant questioning on the details of a project and managers can get a better look at the big picture.
According to RFC 822 for e-mail headers:
The “Cc:” field (where the “Cc” means “Carbon Copy” in the sense of
making a copy on a typewriter using carbon paper) contains the
addresses of others who are to receive the message, though the
content of the message may not be directed at them.
Organizationally, (ab)use of the CC button has become the grown-up form of tattling. People seem to think that by CCing a manager that will put more clout behind an e-mail, equivalent to <snobby kid voice> “I’m going to go tell mom” </snobby kid voice>. Managers sometimes require their subordinates to CC them as a form of technological babysitting. I’m not a military man but I like to operate on the need-to-know principles. When e-mail becomes a constant string of “CC” and “Reply To All” it’s no longer a means of effective, fast, directed communication, just a noisy day care.
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