Claude Shannon defined the informational value of a message by how much it surprised the recipient.  In other words, the more predicable the content the less information or value it has.

In dealing with Knowledge Workers, many authors strongly recommend that you do not micromanage them.  Often they describe the negative aspects of doing this in terms of decreased morale, disaffection and many others.   Some authors do go on to describe the positive benefits of not micromanaging people among them they often list enhanced creativity.  The question I often had is how could you measure this without resorting to surveys.

For some unknown reason it occurred to me that surprise would be a measure of creativity.  If you define creativity as being more unpredictable, i.e. more surprised, then by the theory, the less you micromanage people, the more creative they will be, the more surprised you will be.  So I resolved to experiment with this at the next opportunity I had.

Before describing my experiment let me declare my bias which is that I am very strongly in the anti-micromanagement camp.

The experiment. To prepare for a conference, I needed new business cards.  After having created the name Agile Renaissance I contacted my friend Dan Moran and asked him to design a logo and business card for me.  Here is the email I sent him, spelling and grammatical mistakes intact, on a Friday evening:

Hi Dan:

I need business cards for next Friday morning and need to get into printer on Monday morning.  Would you be able to design something by then?  This is, of course, work for hire.

If you can help here are the constraints:

             card stock:  white or cream
             ink colour:  blue or black


    Card Info:   Norbert Winklareth, ....

    Logo:        Agile Renaissance  (I picture this in a circle with hint motion, indicating that it is process or way of life something that you are working towards.  I am open to other suggestions on this logo, by the way it started out as a renaissance man want to be.)

So I need you to design the logo and then layout it and the info on the card.   Go wild.

Call me on he cell if you have any questions or want to kick around ideas.

I also understand that this is very last second and you may well not be able to help.

On the following Saturday morning, I received the following design from Dan:



(By the way, the contact info on the card is wrong, especially the telephone)

I was very surprised and very, very, pleased/happy/ecstatic with the design that Dan created.  Based on my level of surprise he showed alot of creativity.  This is exactly what the theory predicted.  Based on what I saw I decide that I did not want single colour cards and so I told him that red was my favourite colour and ask if he could work that into the design.  He came back with this:



Again I was surprised, although not to the same degree as when I saw the design for the first time.  After a short discussion the design ended up as this:

If I had insisted that the design follow my original idea of a circle, Dan would have created something but it would not have surprised or delighted me as strongly as the current design does nor allowed Dan the creative freedom that he had.

I also asked Dan about his reaction to the project. Here is his email reply:

No problem Norbert,

I thought your interaction with me was perfect. You outlined your needs, and gave me all your requirements, and timeline immediately. You replied promptly and gave me all the further answers I needed. I wish more people I dealt with, were as efficient as you were. It was super easy working with you.

I absolutely felt you were tapping my design knowledge and experience foremost. That was the primary contribution I made.

As you can see this approach was appreciated by Dan, which is what I was hoping for.

So this crude experiment indicates that Shannon's Information Theory supports the recommended approach of delegating work and not micromanaging knowledge workers. Which is neat.

PS. If anyone is interested in having Dan do some work for them let me know and I will forward your contact information to him.

 

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