Micro-understanding vs. Micro-management. The former is a necessity!

When employees work from home, managing outcomes becomes more difficult, especially if the work is complex and involves close coordination and handoffs among team members. The burden of choreographing team members who are now distributed- some in their homes, others in the office, others across times zones- to get to the outcome invariably falls on the leader, and therein lies the difficulty.

When leaders impose too much oversight, they are accused of micromanagement. Too little oversight, on the other hand, results in a laissez-faire leader. Both, a micro-manager and a laissez-faire leader are bad for the way people need to operate. I once had a boss who insisted on redoing everything I did, and after a while, I lost interest in doing my best work. At another time, I had a leader who would disappear for weeks at a time, and I watched the group collapse as each member did their own thing without any alignment.

What a virtual setting demands is not micro-management or laisse-affaire style, but a style I call micro-understanding.

Micro-understanding is?not the same?as micro-management. Micro-management is an excessively limiting style, with freedom-sapping, anti-trusting, heavy-oversight work interference from the leader manifested, among other things, by extensive reviews, checklists, and layers of approvals. It is about control.

Micro-understanding is about drilling down, sniffing out, and constructing perspectives on a task in its entirety. The leader can detect vulnerabilities and hazards and build a radar for where things could go wrong. This kind of understanding lets you know if your business unit will make it through the quarter. You'll need a backup plan, or when you have an intuitive sense that you're not going to cut that big deal despite everyone else's assurances, and it's what lets you know if someone is lying to you! Micro-understanding gives a leader an operational advantage, which is especially crucial when managing remote staff. Micro-understanding is about delegating but being there to prevent employees from tripping, trusting but ensuring no unforeseen speedbumps, and being flexible but always reading warning signs.

Here are some examples of where micro-understanding is required:

a) Setting priorities and clarifying. In a virtual environment, ruthless prioritizing is a must. Every leader must prioritize and pivot as needed, ensuring that everyone on the team knows what must be done, when and by whom. This is critical not only for alignment and synchronization but also for keeping the work going forward. It is not sufficient to state the priority at a high level; in some circumstances, it is necessary to break it down into its atomic levels so that if one component of the priority is derailed, the entire work is not. Micro-understanding is about knowing how the detailed priorities coalesce together to get to the outcome on time and at desired levels of efficiencies. The leader must have the end picture in mind and know how to piece it together—this necessitates a level of operational clarity of the pieces that make up the jigsaw. In a virtual setting, it isn't easy to wing it. Tasks must be prioritized, distributed, and organized efficiently….and this requires constant prioritizing and clarifying based on real-time issues leaders encounter.

d) Problem-solving. In a remote context, problem-solving is a live process, with alarms on what could go wrong and fixes occurring as and when issues arise right away. Operational issues, interpersonal issues, and strategic issues are all equally significant and must be addressed. This means that the leader must establish a mechanism and dashboards to identify what is or could go wrong and take preventative measures- an ability to scan constantly and instantly know vulnerabilities and obstacles.

d) Coaching and monitoring: In a remote context, leadership is essentially coaching. This is not too dissimilar to what a sports coach would do. A sports coach looks at the whole game and shouts out instructions while the game is being played. When the context is constantly changing, as is the case now, the ability of the coach to read, understand the context, and make the on-the-spot adjustment is a critical skill.

g) When a new team member joins: Given that much of the onboarding of new team members takes place virtually now, the leader must pay special attention to ensuring that the new team member understands the standards, expectations, connections, and culture. After mapping this out for the new team member- the leader needs to have a regular rhythm to ensure that the team member is brought up to speed with the rest of the team and builds the team along a path of proficiency. This requires a pretty deep understanding of how the individual works and in helping them course-correct along the way.

One way to conceptualize micro-understanding is to think of a leader as a movie- director. A movie director must have a clear picture of the final product of the film and a thorough comprehension of the process of getting there. They don't have to be an expert in every aspect of the film-making—specialists will take care of that—but they need to arrange and bring it all together in their heads first and adjust to any surprises that may arise along the road.

Micromanagement is a topic that many executives tiptoe around. On the other hand, micro-understanding is like a hand on the tiller, urging everyone in the right direction while also delving deep when needed. It is a vital talent for a virtual leader; it is often the difference between leading and merely presiding! Micromanagement is an employee obstacle; micro-understanding is an employee resource.

Micro-understanding is an essential skill. Leaders should never apologize for that and clarify how they will go about micro-understanding and making sure they are not micro-managing. It is an organizational and an employee necessity.

Are you good at micro-understanding??