Dealing with MicroManagement ....

In the business world “micromanagement” has assumed massive proportions, with almost everyone of us having witnessed this phenomenon at work.

We have to know whether we are a micromanager before we can do something about it.

•You feel compelled to keep telling people the ‘right’ way to do it.
•You get personally offended and aggravated if you find a worker inefficient in their work.
•Even if the work is done to satisfaction, you still want to fiddle with it before you let it pass your hands.
•You need constant updates about the progress of work that is assigned to sub-ordinates, and here, constant can mean as little as 6 minutes.
•You resist delegating work and immerse yourself in tasks that other people are supposed to carry out.
•You keep nit-picking about small details and discourage people from making independent decisions.

Micromanaging is mostly associated with either Type A personalities or Theory X Leaders, but the need to micromanage could arise from good intentions as well. For example, if you ask a micromanager why they do it, they’ll tell you that they have a heightened sense of responsibility and ownership. This is true, people who micromanage are seen to have a greater sense of ownership, and fear of things going wrong. They will not allow their subordinates to grow because they want to do everything themselves, and have all decisions, big or small, pass through them, and two, the fact that they make life literally unbearable for the folks below who actually know their job and are good at it.

Also they will not let ownership build amongst their team because the team feels that whatever they do, will finally pass through their boss anyway, this leads to complacency. The fact that micromanagers often end up being bottlenecks is another negative fallout. However efficient one may be, it is physically impossible to handle every little nitty-gritty of business by oneself – there will be times where the overall efficiency is compromised because something (which might otherwise be perfectly done in the first place) is waiting for the attention of the micromanager.
So, if you are a micromanager, the chances are that sooner or later you will realize that the employees are spending an increasing amount of time thinking how to deal with their supervisor rather than actually working. If you wait long enough, most of the good self respecting people would have left and you would be left with a team of mediocre employees who just know one thing, follow orders, no questions asked. Good luck with that!