Micro-management is good only for managing crises

I happened to work with a highest qualified micro-manager CEO once.

Few years before we met, he inherited the organization which formerly had been a private business but then got acquired by an international group.

It is difficult to say the organization was well performing, otherwise previous owners wouldn’t have sold it.

But it’s impossible to say it did not perform at all: strong tradition of highest quality, close relations with customers, fairly advanced technological solutions, not only outstanding for the time they were implemented, but some still very relevant.

There was only one problem: for long years margins were so high that many aspects were not covered at all:

• transparency of information
• Planning
• Financial controlling
• Technology controlling
• Process engineering
• Process quality controls
• Manufacturing engineering is still fully outsourced
• Leadership
• Accountability

I think I can continue.

So, to fix the situation, the highly experienced manager was hired, with very strong country and market knowledge, very strong commercial drive, entrepreneurial mindset and lots of years of experience to manage people.

He’s got very particular personality:

• phenomenal memory
• Very pedantic in arranging data
• Wide range of interests
• Great analytical skills
• Ability to get sorted with any matter

He literally started educating all people how to make business with a goal in mind, not just hoping a fortune turns positive. He shared everything he knew on how to make business.

He managed to develop market and increased revenues triple.

He managed to expand production time-fold.

He changed quite strongly the team.

He pushed the organization to implement some processes and systems.

There was only one issue. The Organization was still shaking around breakeven point.

And the CEO of this organization I worked with, complained he could not do anything more, since he’d got no extra time. And all around him as well.

So, I spent some time looking how everything’s working.

I indeed noticed there were many super busy people.

But there were few who literally were not occupied.

I spotted some inconsistencies in functional performances, and discovered some traditional functions were missing. And some quite critical functions and roles.

In few other cases I did not see either clear goal / target setting, or transparent performance management mechanisms, neither did I find a motivation to follow business critical parameters.

I was going around and trying to understand reasons.

And the discovery happened when I took part in some of the business meetings.

What I found: the CEO talked way over 70% of the time at all those meetings. One was at all sounding like a lection, while the matter was at all out of the scope of a CEO.

I understood: I witness one-man show, the perfect example of micro management.

I conducted few more conversations with him and his direct reports, and it got absolutely clear that only few management team members are empowered, there is pretty no delegation from CEO, he kept track on every detail (which could come to his sight) and indeed was totally overloaded.

According to his words, he could not rely on people since capability was low.

Please recall - the team was pretty new, excluding maybe 1-2 managers.

So, what happened, was sort of vicious circle. He could not rely on others and delegate some tasks, but his team was not developing and not getting ready to receive additional tasks from him.

He received the organization in a “storming” time. For that environment the micro-management was appropriate because it was important to get to “norming”. He was fixing many aspects and this required getting into every matter.

But when the team was refreshed, and the most vivid issues resolved, it was time to start with “forming” to be “performing”.

What had to gradually emerge:

• critical capabilities and functions installed
• Key leaders matured through explanations, challenges and questions by CEO. The further it went, the less there should have been explanations, and more challenging questions
• Processes improved from within
• Certain culture of ownership, accountability and achievement shaped

This all could only raise up, when CEO involves the entire organization into creating the future together.

So, what we agreed then, was set of actions on a way to unleash the organization’s potential and bring it to the adequate level of performance:

• Introducing the missing competencies and establishing roles that organization lacked for a long time
• Identifying weak functional capabilities and boosting them to higher performance levels
• A bit of organizational redesign, to achieve better level segregation of duties and balance of powers
• Finding ways to clean the organization from non-performing people, who simultaneously brought negative influence towards personnel by their attitudes
• Lifting leadership capabilities of all chain of command, with some greater focus on production shop floor leaders
• Establishing clear goal setting process with clear definition of accountability areas
• Reviewing and adjusting variable pay schemes to stimulate performance
• Educating firstly leaders of all types with a skill to give and receive feedback, and then trying to spread the knowledge to all employees

We shaped the gradual plan with timelines, how CEO would give away, piece by piece, areas of responsibility he held for himself.

But most importantly, we agreed for individual coaching for CEO himself, since part of the problem resides in his own concerns to give away, driven by his personality.

Micro-management is helpful when you are in crisis. But this mode cannot last long.

An organization under micro-manager is not developing, and micro-manager becomes extremely tired from being constantly overloaded.

When issues are fixed, a leader should force herself to “let go”, even if it means some failures and mistakes.

The sooner a leader starts to empower, the sooner an organization starts to develop and deliver.

For sure, it is required that CEO surrounds herself with a capable cohort of key role holders, having right talents and positive attitudes, to whom she may trust fully.

Even though, self-consciousness and developing own attitudes might be one cornerstone change leading to success.

#consciousleadership #people #management