THE MICROMANAGEMENT MYTH

I once had this boss in my early marketing days in P&G. He was always “butting-in” on my projects, always leaving me messages and asking for updates and sometimes going around me to interject himself right into my projects! He often, I felt, undermined me with the other team members by doing this. I would have called it at the time classic micromanagement!

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I had a wife and two young kids under the age of 3. I had bills to pay, I was scared, and I wasn’t going to be combative with my boss. I had people telling me to “Tell him he is the problem” and “Shove him out of your projects” but I didn’t think this kind of confrontation would work.

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So, I decided to try something different. I sent him, proactively, a weekly project list on Monday morning at 8:00 am; and, on Friday at 5:00 pm I sent him an update and tracker of how many of the project items were completed. I started to proactively write on every matter and keep him copied. I went from writing maybe a few documents a day to dozens. I almost viewed it as a competition of sorts---I was going to beat him to every message and every new development!

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The projects all progressed with huge success. I was elevated to an “Outstanding” rating. And the guy left me alone all the sudden. I would sometimes not even talk to him more than once or twice in a week. He always would tell me, “You have things well in hand, I trust you, shout if you need help”.

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I never really internalized what transpired until a few years later, when I was working in Morocco for one of the smartest business leaders I ever met, Laurent Philippe. And we were one day sitting in a meeting with Laurent, and one of my peers started complaining to Laurent that he was “too involved” and micromanaging an important project. And I will never forget what Laurent said:

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“I am not micromanaging. And I certainly don’t want to. But whenever there is a leadership gap, then expect higher level leaders to step down. The role of a leader is to ‘Stay ahead of their management’ and know more about the project than anyone else. Your issue is you are not on top of things. So, I am forced to have to step down.”

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That’s the day it really crystallized for me. So many people complain about a boss who is micromanaging. It’s strange because I certainly despise having to “step down” when I feel my team should be leading the work; and when I think about it, I really have never met a single business leader who loved to micromanage their people. I meet a lot of people who do, and I do it sometimes. But it’s not by choice or by some kind of personality disorder—we do it because we must. The teams are not “ahead of their management”.

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And therein lies the foundation of the micromanagement myth. It’s frankly pretty much a myth. The boss is very likely not the issue—the individual is. Yes, there may be an outlier here and there, but for the most part, nobody wants to micromanage. We have tons of things to work on! We do it because we must. We have an obligation to deliver. And the leaders on the project are not on top of things. The easiest way to get me out of a project is NOT to tell me to “stop micromanaging”. The easiest way is to up your game, get on top of things, and show me you have a finely tuned machine in project management. Show me you know more than I do about YOUR project—then I will walk away! I will leave you alone so fast you won’t believe it.

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Don’t fall into the trap of the micromanagement myth. And as a result, adopt a victim mentality, feel sorry for yourself, and post solemn quotes on Linked-in about Steve Jobs. Get up off the pity carpet, take control, and get ahead of your management. Always be one step ahead. And very quickly, you will see them disappear and on to other priorities!