THE DANGER OF MICROMANAGING

THE DANGER OF MICROMANAGING

Moments before he passed out behind his desk, Joe’s blood pressure was 220/125. He was actually supposed to be on bed rest, having complained of a nasty headache the previous day. A visit from his doctor ended with an instruction to take time off work for at least two days to rest. But his team was working on a project and as the supervising officer, all the files and other information about the project were in his custody and no member of his team could deliver on the required timelines. He told himself that he would rest after the job was done. He came to the office the following day and, instead of briefing his team on what to do, he promptly sat at his desk to continue working on the project. He was carried out and for three months, could not step into the office. And the project was executed. His absence was only felt in the few days it took for the subordinates he could not trust to get the job done, to get hold of the relevant files. Once they did, they got the job done, and very well too.

Many organizations parade micromanagers like Joe in leadership. No organization can grow or sustain growth if it is built on the culture of micromanaging. Micromanaged organizations don’t grow beyond the capacity of the tribal chiefs. Unfortunately, the damaging effect of micromanaging is not only felt in the organization. The shortest path to burnout for any leader is micromanaging people. A leader who cares about his physical and mental health must realize that being human means that there is a limit to what he can do by himself. Any leader who is uncomfortable with that sobering reality will simply work himself to a grind and be grounded before he realizes that he was never indispensable. The system always finds a replacement that is probably better! The fact that your clock stops ticking does not mean that other clocks around will stop working, even for a second!

Micromanaging is the desire to control, or exercise detailed, almost obnoxious supervision over the work in any organization. Sometimes, this approach may be necessary at the foundational stages of an enterprise when the leader finds himself having to do almost every work in the organization. At that stage, the reality of limited capacity and resources demands close monitoring and supervision of processes and people. At the start of a business, the business owner is a Jack of all trades viz; CEO, accountant, delivery driver, etc. However, as the organization grows, or if it is expected to grow, the capacity of the leader is limited by the growing demands, responsibilities, and resources. Every leader must realize that results or outcomes are only multiplied when efforts are multiplied. Recognizing the limits of any individual’s capacity, the output of all of us is always better than that of any one of us.

Leadership is never about how much a leader can do but about how much he can get done! It is not about what we do for people. It is about what we do WITH them. To multiply impact, multiply input. The greatest favour that a leader can do himself is to work himself out of a job.

Why do people micromanage?

1.???? Megalomania – this is derived from a Messiah Complex, ?a delusion that makes a leader believe that he is larger than life and that he is the only saviour in the moment and that nobody else on his team is skilled enough to do what he can do.

2.???? Drive for perfection – failure is the greatest fear of the micromanager. His dysfunctional self-esteem makes him think he is infallible. Consequently, he doesn’t want any signal of failure from him and his team. Averse to criticism, which he constantly dishes out to those he micromanages, he takes every failure – or even its remote possibility – personally.

3.???? Inability to trust others – when it comes to performance, micromanagers find it difficult to trust the people they delegate assignments to. Consequently, they are constantly breathing down the delegate’s neck as if to prove themselves right. When they delegate an assignment, they almost always expect the delegate to fail, so that they can say, “I told you that you couldn’t do it.”

4.???? Unplanned work – micromanagers operate more on impulse than on purpose. They are usually disorganized when it comes to work plans, and so end up doing much of what should have been delegated if there was a plan. For micromanagers, busyness is a smokescreen for planlessness.

5.???? Attention-grabbing – the micromanager loves to be in the spotlight of recognition. He likes to feel like he is the center of the universe. Micromanagers don’t enjoy sharing praise or recognition with others.

6.???? Insecurity – micromanaging is rooted in a warped self-esteem that finds identity and definition in what one does rather than who one is.

More than 75% of employees claim that they have been exposed firsthand to micromanaging even though only about half of that figure have actually had to walk away from a job because of it. The others simply endured until they could find a better alternative, but their hearts were not on the job....

NEXT WEEK

How can you identify a culture of micromanagement? What should you do as a leader to avoid becoming a micromanager or to stop being one? We will consider these in the next edition.

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