The Subtle Art of Selective Micromanagement

Much has been said about Servant Leadership and the importance of trusting and giving full autonomy to individuals and teams.

In the last few years, "My manager is a micromanager" became a worldwide acceptable excuse to completely flip the blame on the leadership and the organization as if there was never a reason to micro-manage.

However, a much more damaging & common mistake many leaders are making (but nobody is talking about) is the?completely hands-off mode of leadership.

Leaders give full autonomy and blindly trust new people & new teams to make decisions, but as part of that, they don't provide them with the context that they need to succeed.?

They don't push back. They are superficial. They let that team go off the rails. They hope for the best.

The hands-off mode of leadership feels really good, and it might even help them avoid micromanaging IN THE SHORT TERM.?

Ultimately the team doesn't get to where they need to go. The leader doesn't feel a sense of confidence about what the team's doing. The team doesn't feel like they have a sense of autonomy as they are running in circles and not achieving results. And both the leader and the team are frustrated.

WHY?

When leaders are superficial in their vetting, it sends a message that the organization is superficial in its analysis.

This slackness cascades down through the organization, spreading laziness, imprecision, and careless analysis. It manifests as bullshitting, a lack of respect for the senior manager, and, eventually, organizational death.

Superficiality leads to 'glossy' decisions—made at too high a level without a fundamental understanding of the data and the business.

HOW TO FIX IT?

Selective Micromanagement!

If you don't feel confident in your team's direction, the right answer is not to be hands-off and to let them go in the wrong direction. The right answer is to micromanage, but do it in a very tactical, temporary way so that you can help them understand the right direction moving forward so that you can then pull back. – Ravi Mehta on an interview to Lenny Rachitsky 's podcast.

Be overly detailed at the moment that you see a problem. When you see, smell, or are told of something serious, drifting, problematic, or poorly led, you must "drill down on it and manage it, putting aside most of your other issues." Help the team get back on track by any means is necessary, including getting really detailed about the decisions that the team is making.

Over time, the goal is to replace you actively going in and guiding the team's decisions with them having a framework to make the decisions aligned with where you & the company think the right direction is to go. The ultimate success is that you give enough of a framework, and the team has enough autonomy to get answers that are even better than you could come up with.

The best leaders that I had selectively micromanaged me and my team's decisions. I would hate them for that at the moment, but I would thank them later because the results were always much better. I learned 10x more from the leaders who sometimes micromanaged things than from the completely hands-off leaders. Details matter, and managing at the required level is hard work, requires you to go deep to understand things quickly, and sometimes make controversial decisions IN THE SHORT TERM.?

Nothing is more pathetic or more career- and company-threatening than seeing the boss (or a representative of an institution) relying on people whispering in their ears as they answer questions with "I'll have to get back to you on that" or "I'm going to let Mary handle that question—she's more familiar with that aspect of the manufacturing problems we're having with the dyno-wiget." – Bill Lane (Book: Losing It! Behaviors and Mindsets that Ruin Careers: Lessons on Protecting Yourself from Avoidable Mistakes)

Unfortunately, this is more like art than science.?Micromanaging everyone all the time is not scalable and demoralizing, and I hope you understand that it is different from what I'm recommending here.

Your job as a leader is NOT to "make people happy." It is to make them productive and drive the results that matter. Yes, it is a hard job! And yes, it will involve micromanaging at some level sometimes.

How to determine the right amount of leadership your team needs by Ravi Mehta

Starts at:

• (1:06:05) How to determine the right amount of leadership your team needs
• (1:09:40) What selective micro-management is