Congratulations, your boss is a micromanager and feels the need to “contribute” to everything. How can a duck help you?

I often get approached by people asking how to deal with a manager who constantly feels the need to tweak a feature, speed up a timeline, or add their two-cent opinion. In summary, a change must be made, otherwise they may feel left out.

Although this is far from an isolated problem, an effective solution has yet to be discovered.

The closest solution I’ve seen to this problem is based on a story made famous by Jeff Atwood and Brian Wigginton about the development of a chess game. Knowing that producers felt obliged to change something during demos, a developer added a duck as the companion to the queen. Wherever the queen was moved on the board, the duck would follow her. After seeing the demo, the producer gave positive feedback but said to get rid of the duck.

The stroke of genius was that the duck was never intended to be part of the game. Instead, its purpose was to draw the attention of producers to where the developer wanted it to be, on the duck. That is one of the basic principles used by magicians. They direct your focus to one place, allowing the magic to happen somewhere else, to the delight of spectators.

It is important to note that the chess game and the queen functioned well and met high standards of quality. The duck was used to prevent valueless contributions, rather than to mask a defect in the program.

A duck to the rescue

Back to how a duck can help you work with your manager. As a practical example, imagine that your manager constantly tries to accelerate the timeline of a product, no matter how diligent you were during planning.

If you find yourself in this predicament, you know that corners will need to be cut, tests will be incomplete, documentation will be lacking, and the overall deliverable will be akin to a henhouse waiting for the chickens come home to roost.

Your first reaction may be to suggest stretching the timeline before presenting it to your manager. This is wrong and flawed in at least two ways:

• The assumption of lack of intelligence. It may look funny in a cartoon strip, but in real life most managers got to where they are based on merit. Inflated timelines are easily identifiable.
• It is unethical. You would be knowingly trying to deceive a person. Trust between you would erode rapidly.

The duck approach is to discuss a draft proposal where: 1) the scope should contain enough information to communicate clearly, but no precise milestones. 2) a low-resolution timeline, using months and quarters, rather than days and weeks.

From this draft, your manager will likely suggest priority of deliverables and timelines. It is your job to hold your manager accountable to what is possible in terms of scope and time, add slack between tasks and so on, and produce a workable plan.

If everything is a priority and must be delivered first, then there may be a competency problem with your manager. Bring this up with your manager’s manager during your next skip-level meeting.

This applies whether you are an individual contributor or a manager.

General case

The principles of Duck Assisted Management (DAM) are generalizable, but the duck itself is specific to each situation and the traits of the manager.

Be on the lookout for patterns of behavior, make a list of what you believe are the key traits of the manager and run trial and error experiments until you find a duck who will be your ally.

A duck can help you prevent avoidable stress, work in a sustainable way, and improve your skills dealing with your manager. After all, managing upstream is an integral part of managing your work.

If you are unsure how to do it, send me a note telling me about your case. I’d love to hear it and see if we can craft a duck that is right for you.