Micro-management: Everyone seems to agree it's a bad practice - why is it still so common?

We spend half our waking lives at work and job satisfaction is essential to a healthy well balanced lifestyle. Think back to where you were happiest at work and then where you were the least happy. Odds are that it was the people that surrounded you in your workplace that either made it a great place or a terrible one. Good or bad, the atmosphere of the workplace is largely the result of the attitude and style of the manager or leader and the culture they’re fostering.

In our professional lives one of the best things that can happen to us for to be exposed to a good or even a great manager. The type of person that sets a great example, helps you along with professional development, maybe they’re a great coach or mentor, they offer assistance when it’s needed, and are hands off and trust you when it isn’t. While there are many schools of thought on what makes a great manager, and indeed different industries sometimes require that great managers have vastly different traits and styles there is a lot more agreement amongst people on what they don’t want in a manager. One of the most universally vilified traits of a manager is that of the micro-manager.

Positive uses of micro-management

Now, before I come down too hard on micromanaging as a style or practice, lets have a full disclosure, there are instances or situations where micro-management is required and even optimal. According to Ben Mulholland (2018), the pros of micro-managing can often be found in operations which are smaller in nature and those where complex operations require a greater need for monitoring and tracking of project status for consistency. Micro-management or hands on management allows for:

• Greater control over operations 

• Allows accurate knowledge of metrics and project status

• Assists in onboarding employees

• Makes complex and customized operations more reliable

The conditions which benefit from a micro-management are often very common in new or smaller enterprises and those with limited resources. As long as team size stays small or inexperienced there is likely to be little friction or negative effects from this style. However, as team sizes grow, as staff gain experience they will start to chaff under scrutiny.  Things will very likely start to change for the worse, quickly. 

Additionally, any operation that relies heavily on a micro-manager is purposefully creating a large risk at the core of their operations. If the effective operation of your business is tied up with the duties of one person; what happens if that person where to retire with little notice, takes another job somewhere else, decides to open their own business as a competitor, or just wins the lottery? In a micromanaged environment staff may lack the confidence, knowledge, and/or experience to continue efficient operations if that manager should step away temporarily or permanently.

Negative implications of micro-management

In extreme circumstances, Shacoyo Jacobs (2018), details the effects employees feel in a micro-managed environment. Staff often believe that through their micro-management; managers regularly use constant criticism and excessive attention to small details to undermine staff. Now whether the managers actually agree they perform this way may be irrelevant. If there is a perception that they and if the practice is negatively affecting moral, then the damage is being done. As over time these feelings cause employee engagement and moral to decrease which then causes further inefficiencies such as:

• Decreased productivity: Low moral and a lack of employee engagement will cause productivity to drop. As staff are not taking ownership of their jobs they aren’t brining their A game to the work. A colleague once told me that a one point they didn’t bother checking for errors in their work anymore, as their supervisor was going to obsess over their work until they found a problem; why should they put in extra effort in the first place.

• Lack of trust: Whether purposefully or not when a supervisor pours over reports to check for mistakes regularly and then corrects them, they are showing their team that they aren’t trusted to do their jobs. Providing constructive criticism from a place of trust and allowing your team to fix their own mistakes will show that you respect their abilities. This will also allow them to learn from their mistakes in a positive way, rather than negative.

• Increased employee turnover: It is no longer in the workers psyche to stay employed in once job for their whole lifetime. People are increasingly looking for the right-now job. Going to work places where their they can be challenged; while their stills are respected. When moral drops the first people to leave are those talented enough to find work elsewhere. Eventually you may only be left with people who have no other option than to stay where they are; unhappy and disengaged.

• No teamwork/collaboration: By micro-managing you may be centralizing all work flows and processes to go through you as a manager. This discouraged active teamwork and coordination of the rest of the team. Optionally, instead of micro-managing a task you could delegate it to a senior or experienced staff member and pair them up with an inexperienced one. The senior person may appreciate that you are respecting their knowledge and abilities while the junior is learning how to better complete a task from their more experienced peer.

When and why you should or shouldn’t micro-manage

While micro-management can be expected in new, small, and in businesses with complex functions; for consistent operations. It is not ideal, particularly in cases where the micro-manager is not the owner. If this person were to leave then staff may not have the skills, knowledge, confidence or drive to continue the operation with the absence of that authority figure.

So when is the correct time to transition away from this type of management style?  I believe the answer is, and always should be, as soon as possible. While there may be aspects of an operation which have to be micro-managed in the case of under performing and/or inexperienced staff, but these should always be temporary conditions with plans to get everyone on the team to the point of to self-sufficiency in their role.

Priority should be given to advancing the skills, experience, and development of everyone to a point where micro-management is not needed.  Allow staff to take ownership of their tasks, give them the opportunity to succeed or fail and then provide constructive feedback, regardless of the outcome. The best manager I’ve ever had once told me one of the main keys to his management style was:

“When someone does a good job, give them five seconds of praise and never mention it again. Then when someone does a poor job, give them five seconds of constructive feedback and never mention it again.”

Due to my experience working for him I quickly understood the importance of recognizing people’s successes and failures. Failures should never be held over anyone’s head; they should be learning exercises for the individual and the team. When people do make mistakes, and we all do, you shouldn’t wait until a year end report to offer feedback. Feedback should be offered immediately and as often as required, in small relevant doses. Identify areas where a team member may have gone wrong and provide real support to address the root cause of the issue so those failures can be learned from and will help lead to future successes. Or, even better, identify where they went right and share that with the whole team so everyone can learn from their example of success.