Micromanagement is about tightly controlling or observing employees’ work. Although in some cases, this management style might be understood, especially for small-scale projects, generally speaking, micromanagement has a negative connotation mainly because it shows a lack of trust and freedom in the workplace, which leads to adverse outcomes.
Aspect
Explanation
Definition
Micromanagement is a management style characterized by excessive control, close supervision, and an intrusive focus on small details and tasks within a project or organization. It often involves a manager or leader closely monitoring and directing the work of subordinates, leaving little room for autonomy or decision-making at lower levels. Micromanagement can stifle creativity, demotivate employees, and hinder overall productivity if not balanced effectively. It is typically seen as a negative and counterproductive management approach.
Key Concepts
– Excessive Control: Micromanagement is rooted in the desire for extreme control over every aspect of work. – Lack of Trust: It implies a lack of trust in the abilities of employees to perform tasks independently. – Detailed Oversight: Managers under this style often focus on minute details, sometimes to the detriment of broader goals. – Intensive Supervision: Micromanagers closely supervise employees, sometimes leading to a heavy workload for themselves. – Autonomy Suppression: Employees may have limited autonomy and decision-making power.
Characteristics
– Frequent Check-Ins: Micromanagers may require frequent status updates or check-ins on tasks. – Constant Monitoring: Close monitoring of employee activities, often through excessive reporting or surveillance. – Inflexibility: Resistance to deviating from established processes or allowing for creative problem-solving. – Low Empowerment: Employees may feel disempowered and hesitant to make decisions without managerial approval. – High Control: A strong desire for control over every aspect of work, often leading to bottlenecked decision-making.
Implications
– Employee Frustration: Micromanagement can lead to frustration, stress, and reduced job satisfaction among employees. – Decreased Productivity: Constant supervision can slow down work processes and hinder productivity. – Innovation Suppression: Creativity and innovation may be stifled when employees are not allowed to explore new approaches. – High Managerial Burden: Micromanagers may find themselves overwhelmed by the need to oversee every detail. – Attrition Risk: Employees may leave the organization in search of a more empowering work environment.
Advantages
While micromanagement is generally seen as detrimental, some argue it can be advantageous in specific situations such as: – Quality Assurance: In critical or safety-sensitive industries, close supervision can ensure compliance with standards. – Training: For new employees or during complex projects, more guidance may be beneficial. – Risk Mitigation: In situations with high risks, detailed oversight can help prevent errors. However, these advantages are typically short-term and may not outweigh the long-term disadvantages.
Drawbacks
– Reduced Autonomy: Employees may feel disempowered and lose motivation to take ownership of their work. – Slower Decision-Making: Micromanagement can slow down processes as decisions must pass through the manager. – Employee Resentment: Micromanaged employees may become resentful and disengaged. – Lack of Innovation: Creativity and innovation suffer when employees are not given room to experiment. – Burnout: Micromanagers themselves can experience burnout from the constant need to control.
Applications
Micromanagement is generally discouraged, but it may be deemed necessary in specific fields or scenarios where strict adherence to procedures or safety protocols is paramount. Examples include aviation, healthcare, and nuclear energy. However, even in these cases, efforts are made to balance control with employee autonomy and empowerment.
Use Cases
– Safety-Critical Industries: Industries where safety is of utmost importance, such as aviation and healthcare, may employ micromanagement to ensure strict adherence to safety protocols. – Regulated Environments: In highly regulated sectors like finance, micromanagement may be used to ensure compliance with legal and industry standards. – Emergencies: During emergency situations, such as disaster response, micromanagement can help coordinate efforts effectively. – Training and Onboarding: New employees may require closer supervision and guidance until they become proficient in their roles. – Troubleshooting: In troubleshooting complex technical issues, close supervision may be necessary to identify and rectify problems.
For small business owners or startup founders, it is quite natural to fall in the trap of micromanagement. They are the reason why the business exists.
They know how to do things because they have been around since the beginning. On top of that, most of the time in business, decisions, and actions need to be executed quickly and with no mistakes.
Learning how to trust employees can be very hard. Finding the right balance in management between trust and control is even harder. Many founders struggle to adjust to this process.
Failing to adapt and change your management style, however, can lead to more significant issues than not making decisions fast enough. 69% of employees have confessed that they considered changing jobs because of micromanagement, and 36% actually did it.
Without doubts, it’s difficult to trust someone in your team with your life business. However, the cost of onboarding a new employee, together with the time spent on getting her up to speed is far greater than giving someone a chance to do a good job.
Micromanagement in a nutshell
As the word suggests, micromanagement is about closely controlling or observing employees’ work. Although in some cases, this management style might be understood, especially for small-scale projects, generally speaking, micromanagement has a negative connotation. This is mainly because it shows a lack of trust and freedom in the workplace.
Let’s say that you need to assign a task to one of your team members. Usually, managers would sit with the employee, explain the task, make sure that all the tools and resources are available and then leave the employee complete the task by herself.
There might be daily/weekly check-ins, depending on the task, but generally, the accountability is shifted onto the employee. The manager would also make sure that decisions and mistakes happen (in a controlled way) so that the employee can learn and grow faster.
In a micromanagement situation, on the other hand, managers would overly control decisions and activities by the employee. Requesting continuous feedback on progress and creating a fearful environment, where the employee would feel anxious about making mistakes.
Why Do Founders & Business Owners Micromanage?
There are several reasons why business owners tend to micromanage. As said earlier, it is understandable, to a certain extent, to be like this. However, it’s important to recognize why they do so and how to avoid it.
Reasons might include:
Fear Of Delegation – Owners know how to do things. That’s the reason why they are there, and their business is growing. Giving that task to someone else, however, opens a big question mark on whether the task would be done in the same way as they think it should.
Quality Output – Attention to detail is often the critical issue in micromanagement. Founders are afraid that their team members might not pay enough attention to details as they would.
Fear Of Losing Control – As the business grows, the attention shifts away from daily tasks, giving business owners the feeling of detaching themselves from the business. Micromanagement is one way through which founders try to feel still “in control” of everything.
Are You A Micromanager?
This is probably the hardest thing to find out. We all know that no one likes to be micromanaged, it turns out, however, that no one really wants to be known as a micromanager.
To make sure your business strive and growth is at the center of everything you do, it is essential to do a “sanity check” to find out whether you tend to micromanage your business.
1. Are You The Only Decision Maker?
The first step in understanding whether you are a micromanager or not is to check whether people in your company are getting you involved for every single decision they need to make.
Are they asking your approval for everything? Are they CC’ing you in every email? When this happens, the team members’ creativity is non-existent, and no one takes a problem-solving approach to issues.
2. Are All Tasks Created Equally?
Urgency is one of the most challenging things to deal with for micromanagers. While it is true that many tasks are important when growing a business, failing at recognizing the urgency factor can lead you down a slippery slope.
Being involved in urgent matters doesn’t make you a micromanager, however, if every single situation gets your attention (and time) in the same way, then you are not prioritizing things in the right way.
3. Are You The Red Tape?
Bottlenecks are usually the result of excessive bureaucracy rather than employees’ ability to deal with tasks. If you require every single decision to go through you, then you are the biggest and the most dangerous bottleneck of your company.
You have a limited amount of time, and for this reason, you cannot overlook all decisions and tasks. Of course, you might want to overlook important decisions but getting your involvement can lead to delays in making things happen.
4. Does Project Reporting Own You?
Getting tangled in detail is one of the primary causes of delays in getting things done. If you keep asking your employees to report on projects, outside of the agreed timelines, then you are wasting everyone’s time.
When setting tasks or projects for your team, make sure to have milestones check-ins and let your teamwork through these. If something is of particular importance, make sure to stress that out.
Another problem with over-reporting is to point out other people’s mistakes more often than what needed. If you do so, you will get stacked into a loop of request-acceptance from your team. They won’t be able to move forward before getting your approval.
5. Do You Know It Better?
Another common problem of management is to let others tackle tasks in their own way. Especially as a business owner, you tend to think you know things better than others.
However, if you constantly tell your team how to do things, you will block their creativity, and you will only do things in one way, your way, which might have worked until today but it doesn’t necessarily mean, it’s the best way.
What Are The Consequences Of A Micromanaging Culture?
Understanding the consequences of such a culture is an essential step towards improvement. If you are guilty of being a micromanager, you need to understand how the people around you feel so that you can start making changes.
Lack Of Confidence – Employees might start to think that you don’t trust their capabilities in tackling issues. Lack of trust is what comes next, which leads to average outcomes or even worse turn over.
Drop-In Morale – A micromanaged team is worried about making suggestions and innovate. With this atmosphere, team members will start to struggle with their confidence in doing a good job, which will then lead to low performance.
Shift Of Attention – As a business owner, you are the one who knows how to do specific tasks; no one else can. If you micromanage your team, you won’t have time to take care of other essential things you should be looking at.
How To Stop Micromanaging And Start Moving Forward?
Micromanaging is a problem that can result in company failures. However, it is not the endpoint. There are ways to move forward and improve how things are done. The following insights can help you solve this issue and create a winning culture for your company.
1. Hire Only The Right People
As simple as it might sound, hiring the right people will give you peace of mind. One of the pillars of creating a better working culture that is not based on micromanagement is accountability. It is much easier to have a culture of accountability with accountable people.
The hiring process becomes a crucial step in creating a better working culture. How often do candidates seek for advice? How do they look for feedback?
Understanding how someone values accountability from the very beginning can help you save time afterward. On top of that, if you are not involved in all hirings (and you should not), you should make sure every hiring manager is aligned in terms of value and understanding of what is that the company is looking for.
A bad hire not only creates a stressful work environment for you and others, but it also has a direct impact on your financials.
2. Manage Expectations, Not Tasks
Actions and outcomes are very different. Managers tend to spend a lot of time telling their teams what to do and how to do it but invest very little time in the desired outcome. Making sure everyone understands what you expect from them is the key to avoid micromanagement.
When working on a project or a task, take the time to align with your team members on what is expected from them, rather than telling them what to do.
Hold them accountable for the result, not the process. In this way, you encourage employees to make decisions and be responsible for how they tackle tasks. This will also take off the pressure of being controlled all the way.
3. Set Weekly Check-Ins To Check On Progress
Moving away from being a micromanager can be complicated. For this reason, having a structure in place that allows you to check-in regularly with your team can give you peace of mind.
Micromanagers show a lack of trust for their team and have control issues. Working in this way, setting up clear weekly goals with the team can minimize the anxiety of not being in full control of what’s happening in your company.
4. Foster An Open And Honest Communication Culture
With micromanagement, as said, comes a lack of trust and difficulties in communication. To help you and your company move on to a more productive stage, you should make people feel comfortable sharing with you their thoughts and concerns. 39% of employees feel like there is not enough communication in today’s organizations.
Opening your doors, as a manager, will create a stronger sense of team and it will allow you to understand what works and what doesn’t. Remember it’s about the outcomes, not the activities.
5. Give Employees Decision-Making Power and Ownership
When employees feel that they have a saying in what’s happening in the company, they start being more accountable for their work. Decision-making power comes in all forms.
Business owners usually struggle in this as delegating decision-making can lead to difficult business situations. However, when employees are given the power to decide, most of the time they think like the owner.
On the other hand, building a long-term ownership plan can create more accountability. Companies around the world have stake options for employees, depending on their seniority and the time they spend working.
Conclusion
Balancing empowerment and accountability is not simple. Understanding the importance to move away from micromanagement can lead to far greater results than potential problems coming with more freedom.
You hire employees because you trust them with their capabilities. Not giving them the possibility to shine and do more for you will create frustration. With dissatisfaction comes all sort of negative attitude that spreads in your company like cancer.
To succeed and be on top of the game, you will need to shift from a manager to a leadership role and let employees help you do the heavy lifting with you.
Case Studies
Tesla:
Micromanagement Example:
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has been known to closely involve himself in the smallest details of productdesign and engineering.
He often makes last-minute changes and demands immediate action from his teams, leading to high-pressure work environments.
Consequences:
Employees may feel pressured and stressed due to the constant changes and demands from the top.
While Musk’s involvement has led to innovation, it has also resulted in frequent shifts in direction, causing challenges for the workforce.
Startup Companies:
Micromanagement Example:
In many startups, founders are deeply involved in every aspect of the business, from product development to marketing.
Founders may closely oversee and approve minor decisions, fearing any deviation from their vision.
Consequences:
While founders’ passion and attention to detail can drive early success, it can also lead to a lack of autonomy for employees.
Employees might feel restricted in their creativity and problem-solving abilities, which can hinder innovation.
Government Agencies:
Micromanagement Example:
Some government agencies have strict regulations and hierarchies, leading to a micromanagement culture.
Managers may require employees to follow rigid procedures and seek approval for even minor decisions.
Consequences:
Bureaucratic micromanagement can slow down processes and create inefficiencies.
Employees may become demotivated and less engaged in their work due to limited autonomy.
Retail Chains:
Micromanagement Example:
Retail managers in large chains may closely monitor employees’ every action, from how they arrange products to how they interact with customers.
There might be strict scripts and protocols to follow.
Consequences:
Employees may feel like they have little room for creativity or personal judgment.
While consistency in customer service is important, excessive micromanagement can lead to frustrated and demoralized staff.
Educational Institutions:
Micromanagement Example:
Some school administrators and principals might micromanage teachers by specifying detailed lesson plans and classroom procedures.
Teachers may have limited autonomy in shaping their teaching methods.
Consequences:
Micromanagement can hinder teachers’ ability to adapt to students’ needs and innovate in the classroom.
It may also result in a less dynamic and engaging learning environment.
Key Highlights:
Micromanagement Defined: Micromanagement involves tightly controlling or observing employees’ work, often due to a lack of trust or a desire for control. While it might be suitable for small-scale projects, it generally has a negative connotation due to its stifling effects on trust and freedom in the workplace.
Dangers of Micromanagement: Micromanagement can lead to negative outcomes, including employee dissatisfaction, turnover, and reduced morale. Employees who feel micromanaged are less likely to take initiative and innovate, leading to decreased performance and creativity.
Reasons for Micromanagement:
Fear of Delegation: Business owners often micromanage due to fear that tasks won’t be performed to their standards if delegated.
Quality Concerns: Attention to detail drives micromanagement, as owners worry about others not maintaining their level of precision.
Fear of Losing Control: As businesses grow, owners may feel detached and resort to micromanagement to retain a sense of control.
Identifying Micromanagement in Yourself:
Decision-Making Control: If all decisions require your approval and input, it indicates a lack of trust in your team’s abilities.
Task Prioritization: Treating all tasks with equal urgency inhibits effective task management and indicates micromanagement tendencies.
Creating Bottlenecks: If all decisions must pass through you, you become a bottleneck that delays progress.
Excessive Reporting: Overly demanding project reports can slow down progress and stifle team autonomy.
Imposing Your Approach: Constantly dictating how tasks should be done stifles creativity and individual problem-solving.
Consequences of a Micromanaging Culture:
Lack of Confidence: Micromanagement erodes employees’ confidence and trust in their abilities, leading to average or subpar outcomes.
Drop in Morale: A micromanaged team is hesitant to contribute ideas and innovate, resulting in lower morale and performance.
Shifted Attention: As an owner, excessive micromanagement diverts your focus from higher-level tasks crucial for the business’s growth.
Overcoming Micromanagement:
Hire Right: Select employees who value accountability and align with your company’s culture to foster a less micromanagement-driven environment.
Manage Expectations: Focus on desired outcomes rather than dictating every step, allowing employees to take ownership of their tasks.
Implement Check-Ins: Regular check-ins help you stay informed without micromanaging, fostering trust and effective communication.
Promote Open Communication: Encourage open dialogue to build trust and allow employees to express their thoughts and concerns.
Delegate Decision-Making: Empower employees to make decisions, which enhances accountability and often leads to more thoughtful choices.
Conclusion:
Striking a balance between empowerment and accountability is crucial.
Shifting from micromanagement to a leadership role leads to better results and employee satisfaction.
Trusting employees and allowing them to shine contributes to a more positive and productive workplace environment.
In a hierarchical structure, you have a company organized in a vertical manner, where groups follow a top-down decision-making approach, where most decisions flow from the top to the bottom of the organization. One example is Apple’s organizational structure today.
In a flat organizational structure, there is little to no middle management between employees and executives. Therefore it reduces the space between employees and executives to enable an effective communication flow within the organization, thus being faster and leaner.
A holacracy is a management strategy and an organizational structure where the power to make important decisions is distributed throughout an organization. It differs from conventional management hierarchies where power is in the hands of a select few. The core principle of a holacracy is self-organization where employees organize into several teams and then work in a self-directed fashion toward a common goal.
Distributed leadership is based on the premise that leadership responsibilities and accountability are shared by those with the relevant skills or expertise so that the shared responsibility and accountability of multiple individuals within a workplace, bulds up as a fluid and emergent property (not controlled or held by one individual). Distributed leadership is based on eight hallmarks, or principles: shared responsibility, shared power, synergy, leadership capacity, organizational learning, equitable and ethical climate, democratic and investigative culture, and macro-community engagement.
Micromanagement is about tightly controlling or observing employees’ work. Although in some cases, this management style might be understood, especially for small-scale projects, generally speaking, micromanagement has a negative connotation mainly because it shows a lack of trust and freedom in the workplace, which leads to adverse outcomes.
Agile leadership is the embodiment of agile manifesto principles by a manager or management team. Agile leadership impacts two important levels of a business. The structural level defines the roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators. The behavioral level describes the actions leaders exhibit to others based on agile principles.
Active listening is the process of listening attentively while someone speaks and displaying understanding through verbal and non-verbal techniques. Active listening is a fundamental part of good communication, fostering a positive connection and building trust between individuals.
Adaptive leadership is a model used by leaders to help individuals adapt to complex or rapidly changing environments. Adaptive leadership is defined by three core components (precious or expendable, experimentation and smart risks, disciplined assessment). Growth occurs when an organization discards ineffective ways of operating. Then, active leaders implement new initiatives and monitor their impact.
A RASCI matrix is used to assign and then display the various roles and responsibilities in a project, service, or process. It is sometimes called a RASCI Responsibility Matrix. The RASCI matrix is essentially a project management tool that provides important clarification for organizations involved in complex projects.
In a flat organizational structure, there is little to no middle management between employees and executives. Therefore it reduces the space between employees and executives to enable an effective communication flow within the organization, thus being faster and leaner.
Tactical management involves choosing an appropriate course of action to achieve a strategic plan or objective. Therefore, tactical management comprises the set of daily operations that support long strategy delivery. It may involve risk management, regular meetings, conflict resolution, and problem-solving.
High-performance management involves the implementation of HR practices that are internally consistent and aligned with organizational strategy. Importantly, high-performance management is a continual process where several different but integrated activities create a performance management cycle. It is not a process that should be performed once a year and then hidden in a filing cabinet.
Scientific Management Theory was created by Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911 as a means of encouraging industrial companies to switch to mass production. With a background in mechanical engineering, he applied engineering principles to workplace productivity on the factory floor. Scientific Management Theory seeks to find the most efficient way of performing a job in the workplace.
Micromanagement is about tightly controlling or observing employees’ work. Although in some cases, this management style might be understood, especially for small-scale projects, generally speaking, micromanagement has a negative connotation mainly because it shows a lack of trust and freedom in the workplace, which leads to adverse outcomes.
Why does micromanagement happen?
Reasons might include: Fear Of Delegation – Owners know how to do things. That’s the reason why they are there, and their business is growing. Giving that task to someone else, however, opens a big question mark on whether the task would be done in the same way as they think it should. Quality Output – Attention to detail is often the critical issue in micromanagement. Founders are afraid that their team members might not pay enough attention to details as they would. Fear Of Losing Control – As the business grows, the attention shifts away from daily tasks, giving business owners the feeling of detaching themselves from the business. Micromanagement is one way through which founders try to feel still “in control” of everything.
Luca is an experienced sales executive and business coach with a background of over 10 years in sales and management. When not working, Luca runs one of the leading online magazines for startup knowledge, MyStartupLand, with the aim of providing meaningful and helpful content to startup founders and business people.
