Micro-boy vs. Macro-man

Look!  Up in the sky!  It’s a bird, it's a plane…no its Macro-man!  Able to solve large problems with creative big thinking.  Faster than a speeding data line and able to leap to broad conclusions in a single bound.

We all need at least one Macro-man, a big thinker who can see above the daily fray and know where the world is going and how to get there.  They have VISION but details…well details shmetails…that’s for later.  But the devil is in the details, and aren’t nearly as exciting and energizing as the VISION and they can get muddled in the politics and the nuts and bolts of the “HOW.”

Meet Micro-boy…in the media archive / dam environment, Micro-boy pains on the plight of every asset; to Micro-boy every record is precious.  The assets metadata record completeness and accuracy along with the integrity of the digital asset and its backups are his reason for being.  He tackles all the different flavors of problems and exceptions that come up in the course of the day and makes things happen.  He knows where all the bodies are buried.  Micro-boy sees WHY every “simple” request from Macro-man is complex and challenging.  Meanwhile, Macro-man wonders why Micro-boy makes everything more complicated than it needs to be.  Why can’t he just get with the program and get it done?

Micro-boy wants to circle the wagons and fix all the known issues before expanding into new things.  Let's get what we already have perfect before we add to the collection. 

Macro-man wants change.  He sees opportunity everywhere and drives initiative around overall benefits and for revenue and opportunity.  Macro-man wants to move mountains and will tend to oversimplify the tasks involved in getting the archive DAM operationally sound.   "We have 20,000 hours already encoded, can we transcode by next week for this new...?"

So, how does Micro-boy survive in a Macro-land? Or, how does a Macro-man deal with Micro-boy details?  They both want to be superheroes in their organizations but approach problems very differently.  Effective teamwork, cooperation and communication are key to a successful effort.  You need to have both superheroes.  Too many Macro-men and you ger a lot of grand ideas and little results.  Too many Micro-boys and you will have a small pile of content lovingly completed but the waterfall of content pouring into their world will pile up in backlog waiting for the same TLC that can never come.

So take a moment to reflect...are you a Macro-man or a Micro-boy?  There is nothing wrong with either..perhaps you are a little of both,  Whichever it may be it is important to recognize the importance of each.

DAM'stas unite!  Can't we all just get along?

Comments

[Danny]

I am facing this situation right now, and I feel pressured to be a little bit of both. I have a client who is looking to implement a sizable DAM solution in a hurry -- I'm trying to balance the big picture of just what it is they really need with the details of getting all the assets ingested with accurate and thorough metadata. So in trying to be both, am I neither?

Thanks for your recent comment. The video project (separate from the one described above) has been folded into a larger DAM project. I am still a participant but it's as part of a larger group. We shall see.

d