Marissa Mayer believes micromanaging is what makes her successful

It’s no secret that the only people who enjoy micromanagement are the people doing the micromanaging. This is one of the biggest criticisms people have for Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer who has a reputation for rampant micromanagement. Rather than denying this accusation, however, as well as several others, Mayer embraced them in an interview with Steven Levy.

Marissa Mayer has been criticized for a number of management issues at Yahoo, including instituting a version of stack ranking and changing the company’s remote work policy. A common thread in this criticism is a reputation as a micromanager: that she gets intensely involved in minor product details, makes big demands, and doesn’t always take feedback well. Rather than denying that characterization, she embraced it in an interview with Steven Levy that appeared on Medium. From the piece: Mayer embraces her penchant for detail. “[Though] micromanagement can be viewed as a criticism, it can also be something that can make you a lot more successful,” she says. “And for me over the course of my career, and especially here, it’s been about, how do I use the fact that I can keep a lot of facts and details in my mind to my advantage?” The way to do that, she concludes, is “telescoping in on something that really matters.”