In a previous blog post I listed ten types of really bad managers. The first and perhaps most common type of really bad manager I listed is the Micromanager. It’s also one of the most destructive.
You know how it works. A Micromanager insists on knowing what an employee is doing every minute of every single day, to the point of monitoring that person’s every movement. It’s frustrating and ultimately counterproductive
What Is—and What Isn’t—Micromanagement
First, a word about what isn’t micromanagement. Requiring regular updates on projects isn’t micromanagement. Asking for weekly reports isn’t micromanagement. Checking in on employees to see how they’re doing isn’t micromanagement.
However, doing any of these things to the extreme can constitute micromanagement. A manager who breaks down a simple project into multiple component parts and then tracks not only the progress on each part but how it’s being done is micromanaging. A manager who asks not for weekly reports but daily reports is micromanaging. A manager who hovers over their employees, figuratively looking over their shoulders as they do their daily work, is micromanaging.
In short, micromanaging is overmanaging. It’s being so focused on what employees are doing every minute of every day that the employees have no opportunity to work on their own. It’s not trusting employees to do their jobs—or thinking that the only way they can do their jobs is if the manager is always there watching over them.
One common component of bad management is constant monitoring. Micromanagers tend to track what employees are doing down to the nth degree, dividing normal tasks into subtasks and sub-subtasks, constantly inquiring about the employee’s progress every step of the way. Micromanagers not only want to know what employees are doing but how they’re doing it—and they demand that employees do it exactly their way, no variations. It’s stifling.
I look at micromanagement as like being asked to show all your work in a math class. After a point, students can skip right over the basic steps they’ve learned and take the necessary mental shortcuts to get the right answer. Students (rightly) get frustrated when a teacher asks them to show all their work, no matter how unnecessary.
Micromanagers are like overanalytical math teachers. They want employees to show all their work, however pointless that might be. It’s a way of controlling every minor detail of what their employees are doing. They hover over the employee’s shoulder and monitor every word they type, providing unwanted input and imposing their own will on the way their employees work.
Why Micromanaging is Bad
Micromanagers are more focused on process rather than results. To these really bad managers, how an employee does something is more important than what the employee accomplishes. It doesn’t matter if a project is completed on time and well; if the employee didn’t do it the right way or in the right time frame, that employee failed. The emphasis is wrong.
Micromanagement is particularly harmful because it signals that the manager doesn’t trust their employees. They don’t trust their employees’ skills, experience, or motivation. They don’t trust employees to know what they’re doing, they don’t trust employees to manage their own time, they don’t trust employees to do anything right or on schedule. There is zero trust, period.
This lack of trust is demoralizing for anyone who works with a Micromanager. It is the opposite of motivating; how eager would you be to go above and beyond the call of duty for someone who doesn’t trust you to do the job for which you were hired? It has the opposite effect on employees, who end up suffering under the burden and doing the bare minimum to get by.
Micromanagement also sends the wrong message to employees. For Micromanagers, what matters is that their staff is constantly occupied and doing things in the one and only approved fashion. Micromanaged employees quickly learn that there is no benefit to being innovative or even working hard. They get points for following the manager’s instructions (to a “T”) and keeping their heads down and noses to the grindstone. Under a Micromanager nobody excels, nobody stands out, nobody progresses, because the manager doesn’t let them. The team never gets any better than the manager allows.
How Really Bad Managers Micromanage
Micromanagers micromanage by constantly monitoring their employees and getting in their faces. They track every little thing their employees do, or make their employees track everything. They ask a lot of questions and are seldom satisfied with the answers.
In years past, Micromanagers would track employees’ work in enormous spreadsheets, with a separate row for every individual part of every task they’ve been assigned. Today they use the tracking tools in Microsoft Teams and other apps, which allow them to monitor employees’ actions in real time. Some even make employees install “productivity management” software on their computers that records activity on a minute-by-minute and keystroke-by-keystroke basis. It’s beyond intrusive.
Micromanagers like to have employees walk them through what they’re doing, step by invasive step. I had one Micromanager who insisted on reading my copy with me, out loud, word for word. This let him “evaluate” my work, frequently pointing out where he’d like this or that single word changed, for no reason other than that was how he would have said it. He didn’t let me do my job, he didn’t provide overall feedback. He scrutinized every word I wrote, as if I couldn’t be trusted to write a single sentence by myself. It was infuriating.
That’s another thing about Micromanagers. They come into work with the assumption that none of their employees can do their jobs right. They think that employees are either screwing up or screwing off. They have to monitor every little thing their employees do because they’re either doing it wrong or they’re working hard enough. The only way to control these incompetent lollygags is to constantly monitor what they’re doing.
Why Really Bad Managers Micromanage
Given the prevalence of micromanagement in the corporate world today, one must ask why it is that really bad managers micromanage. What has led us to this plague of micromanagement?
First, know that some Micromanagers are just born that way. Some people can see the big picture and others can’t; some people are so detail focused that they can’t see beyond the smallest component of a task. These folks, who are probably better suited to be accountants or proofreaders, have no business managing anybody; they’ve simply been promoted into the wrong position. A manager needs to move past the small stuff and focus on larger issues; individuals prone to micromanagement simply can move beyond the details and thus naturally try to monitor and manager the details of others’ work.
Many really bad managers micromanage because they don’t trust their employees. Sometimes this lack of trust is warranted, especially if the really bad manager is also a bad hirer, which many are. You get burned often enough by employees not doing their jobs well and you’re apt to micromanage every worker in your employ. A manager who thinks all employees are untrustworthy will treat all employees as if they’re untrustworthy, whether they are or not. Micromanagement results.
Not all Micromanagers are malevolent, however. Some people who micromanage do so because they’ve never been trained otherwise. This is common among first-time or middle managers who’ve been promoted from the daily working ranks. They don’t know how to manage other people doing work so they default to trying to do that work for them via micromanagement. Until they’re shown different, these well-meaning individuals will tend to micromanage and engage in other really bad management behavior.
Still other Micromanagers are forced into it by their own managers. If you yourself are micromanaged, it’s likely you’ll pass that micromanage down to the employees you manage. It’s tough to be a big-picture manager when your boss is insisting on daily progress reports. If your manager wants to know what exactly employee A is doing today, you have to resort to micromanagement to appease the person above you.
Company culture can also contribute to micromanagement. This often happens in smaller companies, where the owner hasn’t learned how to loosen the reigns. If the entire company is built on micromanagement, it’s almost impossible for any one individual to buck the culture and do things differently.
Is Micromanagement Ever Necessary?
It should be noted that some positions require more management than others; you can’t just back off and trust all employees in all jobs. In fact, in some situations, micromanagement may be a necessary evil
For example, you’re managing low-level employees in a fast-food restaurant, you may need to manage them tighter than if you’re managing skilled professionals in a white collar environment. Managing unmotivated employees, as younger and lower-paid workers often are, sometimes requires staying on top of them to make sure they actually do their jobs. You’d like to think that, once trained, you can let them loose to perform their mandated activities, but that isn’t always the case. If workers are apt to slack off, you may need to resort to micromanagement to keep them working.
Similarly, you probably need to more closely manage newer employees than you would those with more time under their belts. It’s not necessarily don’t trust newer employees, especially those who come with little training or experience, it’s just that they’re more likely to need your oversight and assistance as they’re learning the ropes. Hopefully they learn how to function on their own and you can pull back on the micromanagement; if not, you have other problems.
The danger is to think that all employees, at all levels and in all positions, require the same level of management. They don’t, and a good manager will recognize this. Micromanage if you have to but err on trusting your more skilled and experienced workers to do their jobs properly.
That’s how you avoid becoming a Micromanager yourself.
