What is micro-management?
We all know the greatest sin in organisations is micromanagement, right? Nobody wants to be micro-managed, and it’s a Pointy-Haired Boss behaviour that’s indicative of everything that’s wrong with working life.
There are two problems with this perspective.
The first is that, for fear of ever micro-managing, even the tiniest bit, many organisations give up entirely on doing any managing at all. Instead of micro-managing we end up with what Henry Mintzberg calls “macro-leading” - IE all big picture, vision, inspiration etc. Very heroic looking, but lacking in day to day substance.
Because here’s the thing: people (and organisations) do need leadership. But they need about one booster shot a month (or, at most, a week). And that’s it. But they need management every single day. Management is the messy work of being there for people, to challenge and support them, to help them learn and grow, day in and day out. To only want to do leadership is to want to be the kind of parent who buys your kid a car for their graduation, without having done the hard, time consuming, thankless graft of nappy changes, and discipline, and hand holding. The “unheroic” stuff.
Managers need to get involved more. They need to go and see for themselves what is happening. They need to ask questions to help people learn. What problem are we solving? Why? What solutions have we tried? Why? What effect do we think these solutions will have? Why? How could we do this better? etc etc. This can be read as interfering by some people, but if managers don’t interfere they cannot do their job. The desired end goal is that their reports are able to solve more problems themselves - this is a coaching-type engagement, which aims to grow the capacity of the coachee. Managers cannot sit back and wait to be asked to help, they must probe.
That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that there is a developmental component to the idea of 'micro-management'.
Micro-management is when your boss gets up in your business - they cross over what you regard as your boundaries, and get their hands on your stuff. But different people have different boundaries, it depends where they are on their development journey. As we get older and (ideally) more mature, the nature of our boundaries change.
More mature team members will expect to set their own standards. They want to own their roles and be in charge of evolving them through a good process of self-evaluation. They want feedback that will help them check their work for themselves. They want to set their own role strategy, but they are open to input about how that process is going.
More junior team members will often look to their manager to tell them what is good and bad. They want clear expectations about what they are supposed to do (and not do). In other words, their managers set the role strategy, but they execute on it. They want to feel trusted.
Support that would feel like micro-management from a more mature standpoint might be seen as essential to somebody younger or less experienced. There is a video from Bob Kegan that touches on exactly this point.
Overall, the question to ask yourself is: “Is my fear of being a micro-manager making me a worse manager overall?” Do you have the courage to try, and get it wrong?
