Are Your Agile Daily Stand-Ups a Tool for Micromanagement?

Daily stand-ups are for team members to update the group on their work in progress (WIP), and discuss work completed, current tasks, blockers, and collaboration opportunities. However, unless you’re careful, these meetings can turn into micromanagement sessions.

Why? Because you’re managing the work instead of coaching your people. When WIP stalls, it indicates a problem in the process. If you fix the work problem instead of allowing your employees to do so, several negative outcomes occur.?

Why Micromanagement Hurts

First, the employee becomes demoralized. When you step in and solve the problem for them, they might feel their abilities are undervalued or that you lack confidence in their capabilities. This can significantly impact their morale and motivation.

Second, the underlying process remains unfixed, meaning the problem will likely recur. By addressing only the immediate issue without involving the employee, you miss the opportunity to identify and correct any flaws in the process that caused the problem in the first place. This sets the stage for the same issue to arise again, creating a cycle of inefficiency and frustration.

Third, your employees miss out on growth opportunities. Problem-solving is a crucial part of professional development. When you take over, you deny your employees the chance to learn, develop their skills, and gain confidence in handling similar situations in the future. This stunts their growth and keeps them from reaching their full potential.

Lastly, you train your employees to rely on you for problem-solving, which undermines their autonomy. By consistently stepping in, you inadvertently teach them that they don’t need to think critically or take initiative since you will always handle it. This creates a dependency that can be detrimental to both their independence and the overall efficiency of the team. It also places an unnecessary burden on you, as more employees come to you with problems they could solve on their own.

What I Used to Do Wrong

As a former accidental micromanager, I understand that both you and your team hate micromanagement. It’s frustrating to constantly check on others' work. Why isn't the work getting done? Why is that item still a WIP when it just requires a simple action?

This frustration often leads to monitoring specific tasks too closely, inadvertently turning you into a micromanager. Despite following the Agile playbook, you find yourself in the weeds following up on minutia, and trying to solve the problem yourself. I once had an employee show me a to-do list every day. Don’t be like former-me.

The Solution

You shouldn’t fix the problem by dictating solutions or doing it yourself. You need to coach your employees to find and implement the solutions themselves.

Coaching Questions to Ask:

• Why is that WIP still open?
• What have you tried so far?
• How did that work?
• What are your next steps?
• What resources do you need?
• When did you realize you were blocked??
• If you had unlimited resources, how would you solve this?
• How can I help?

Avoid Saying:

• What if we did this?
• I will talk to that person (unless they’ve already tried).
• I can handle this.
• When I had a similar problem, I did this.
• You need to work harder.
• I want daily progress reports until it’s done.

The coaching questions help encourage your employees to build a habit of thinking through the steps of problem solving. The questions to avoid help you prevent yourself from solving the problem for them.

Embrace Problem-Solving

You're in your role because you love solving problems but, here’s a secret: so does every human being on earth. By solving problems for them, you deprive them of growth and deprive yourself of learning a new way to solve a problem—your way is not always the best way. Micromanaging stifles development for everyone involved. Don’t just teach them to solve specific problems; teach them to recognize when they are blocked and to take the steps to unstick their own problems.

When you notice a stalled WIP in a daily stand, see it as an opportunity to foster problem-solving skills in your team rather than slipping into micromanagement. Remember you manage people, not work.