The Danger of Micromanagement

Micromanagement is often misunderstood. On one hand, leaders are wrongly accused of it by followers not wanting to live up to certain standards; in other cases managers strangle the potential and drain the passion from its best people by nitpicking them and becoming overinvolved in their jobs. To accurately assess whether micromanagement is taking place, or not, we should first understand its definition: to control with excessive attention to minor details. Two key words in this definition are: excessive and minor. Based on this understanding, here are three examples of what micromanagement is not:

• It is not holding someone accountable for violating one of the core values of your organization.  Values are not minor details, they are major components of an organization’s culture. Enforcing them is necessary to protect both the team member and customer experience.
• Micromanagement is not terminating an employee because they failed to attain your performance standards, for the same reasons I offered concerning core values. Performance failure is not a minor detail.
• Establishing clear expectations for what a person must accomplish and by when is not micromanagement. Creating clarity is a primary leadership responsibility and failing to do so betrays your people, leaving them confused and demoralized.

Frankly, there are some aspects within an organization that must be held in an iron grip; that are not up for discussion, debate, polls or census. They are the “this is the way we do things here” aspect of a culture that define what you stand for, and what you won’t fall for, as well as appropriate consequences for failing to live up to them. Without this level of clarity and resolve your culture will devolve into a politically correct cesspool, creating a sanctuary for three amigos of misery: the underachieving, entitled and ungrateful.

Here are three examples of micromanagement in practice:

• A manager who expects to make every decision, solve every problem and have every idea, making his people so dependent on him they are immobile in his absence.
• A manager who designates desired outcomes, but then lays out every step a person must take to get there; this leaves nothing to the creative license of the employee and ensures the person takes no ownership of the plan or responsibility for failure since it was all his boss’ idea.
• A manager who persistently gets overinvolved in the work of subordinates; nitpicking, second guessing and basically making his people’s lives miserable.

With a clearer picture of what micromanagement is not, and what it is, consider the nine following truths about micromanagement:

1. If you hire the wrong people you’ll have little choice but to micromanage them. After all, you’d be foolish to allow incompetent or corrupt employees to make decisions, solve problems, or implement their ideas.
2. Micromanagement is a primary de-motivator for top performers. Your best people despise having to check with you for everything, and not being trusted enough to make the right decision or do the right thing.
3. Micromanagement assures your people won’t grow. If people aren’t allowed to think for themselves, to innovate, try new things, or implement their ideas they may not make many mistakes, but they won’t grow either because the mistakes they make and learn from are essential to their development.
4. Micromanagement assures you won’t grow personally. If you’ve become the “go-to” person for every decision, problem and idea you’ll become so bogged down in nickel and dime nonsense you won’t have any time for bigger picture leadership responsibilities like creating vision, mentoring high potential people, strategizing or brainstorming future possibilities.
5. Micromanagement works in the short term. This is why so many managers are addicted to it. It’s always easier to make the decision personally, or perform a task yourself than it is to teach someone else how to do it. Micromanagement will, however, extoll a significant price over the long haul though, as you consider the consequences of points three and four.
6. Micromanagement is symptomatic of insecurity and an inflated ego. You’re afraid to push power down or give discretion to others because you feel it diminishes your value and importance; you’re afraid of losing control.
7. The opposite of micromanagement is empowerment. Empowerment provides latitude and discretion for others to make decisions, spend money to solve customer problems, and implement ideas to move the organization forward. Whereas micromanagement alienates subordinates, empowerment engages them. 
8. Empowerment is about delegating outcomes without defining step-by-step methods. Naturally you may have certain processes where each sequential step must be followed, but in other cases you can empower employees by defining precise outcomes and deadlines, telling them what not to do in order to make it happen, and then let them run with it using their own creativity and talents to create a successful outcome. In cases like this they “own” it, will be more responsible for the result, and highly engaged throughout the process. They are also likely to discover a better way of doing something than has been done previously.  
9. A leader’s job is to ultimately make his or her people less, not more, dependent on them. Micromanaging actually has the opposite effect and makes people more dependent on their manager. Just as your objective when raising a child is teaching them to be self-sufficient—so they can eventually move out of your basement—the goal when leading a team is to do likewise. This multiplies your leadership throughout the organization, helping people to become more valuable in their roles so that together you can accelerate the organization’s progress.

If all this talk of empowerment makes you a bit nervous, and you prefer to hold the people reins in your dealership in a death-grip: to make every decision, solve every problem, and have every idea , let me take the pressure off you; you’re not that good. No one is. To lead your organization to its fullest potential you’ll need to give up to go up; releasing some  tasks and decisions you’re now executing to those in a better position than you are to do them; equip  them, hold them accountable for results, and get out of their way.