Micro Managing

Why Micro Managing Is Normally Considered a Poor Management Strategy

Most of us have heard, read, seen, or been told by “experts” that micro managing is ineffective and actually hurts our performance. In addition, it jeopardizes the performance of our staff, both individually and collectively. A micro manager classically concentrates on smaller tasks and monitors every step, action, nuance, and activity of his/her employees; hesitates to delegate properly; and does not allow staff to exhibit creativity or independent thought.

Actually, many experts can become quite forceful— even nasty— when talking or writing about the subject. With articles like, “Micro Managing Will Strangle Your Business!” (Dr. Paul E. Adams) and “Micro Management: A Necessary Evil or Just Plain Evil?” (Molly Luffy), some writers get rather emotional about its shortcomings. Most of the time, the experts are correct – micro managing is usually the wrong choice for a number of reasons:

  • Employees often lose the ability and confidence to think for themselves
  • Creativity and innovation are often discouraged
  • Management development becomes a back burner issue or is halted altogether
  • Both management and staff productivity suffer

Robert Noyce, the founder of leading chip manufacturer, Intel, has a famous quote that has become an anthem to anti-micro management: “Get the barriers out of the way to let people do the things they do well.” As an operational philosophy, micro managing achieves little and can cause long term problems.

When Micro Managing Is Not Acceptable, But Preferred

There are situations that good supervision almost mandates some micro managing to achieve desired results in reasonable time frames. Though most experienced, successful managers would rather eat live insects than admit they sometimes micro manage, all good professionals do it in certain situations. And it usually improves performance. Here is an example of a situation where micro management will help, not hurt, you and your staff.

You work for an international company and need sales data for the prior quarter. You advise your staff that you need the “sales figures for the past three months by Tuesday.” When Tuesday comes and you review the data, you are annoyed because it isn’t what you really wanted. You didn’t want just gross company-wide sales figures. You really wanted the data broken down by:

  1. Country and then by Europe, North America, South America, etc. Gross company numbers don’t really help you for the analysis you wanted to do.
  2. Product type and country. You really wanted to know which products were “hot” and which were not.
  3. Number of units sold and the pricing thereof. Since pricing differs from region to region and country to country, you wanted to know how many units were sold to achieve the sales data breakdown.
  4. Some graphic representations of the data breakdown. To spot trends, you really wanted some graphics so you could analyze any improvements, regressions, and/or seasonal influences.

The only good news in this example: You could never be accused of micro managing your staff. You not only delegated the project, but you didn’t even provide any details about the format or depth of the data you needed. By NOT micro managing, here is what you’ve “achieved” in this example.

  • One or more employees spent company time preparing a report you didn’t want in the first place.
  • You dedicated time to analyze the data in the report, which is now impossible.
  • One or more staff members have to recreate the correct report when they could be accomplishing other tasks.
  • You must re-allocate more time, when you had planned to accomplish other goals, to complete the analysis you originally needed to perform.

Micro Managing Can Often Save Time and Money

There are times when micro managing is appropriate. If there is any chance of employees misunderstanding the task or project you want to be performed, you will be rewarded for “temporarily” micro managing your staff. By being clear and precise in your instructions, your employees will know exactly what you want and will typically be a bit more careful to give you specifically what you requested.

You’re “To Do” list will not have to be scratched out (looking like your four-year-old got to it), your time will be maximized, your staff will be more efficient and proud of their efforts, and you can improve your personal performance record. Ironically, all of these positive results occurred because you did the “thing that shall not be mentioned” (micro managing, shhh).

Be wary not to get carried away with micro management. The experts are correct when they state that, unless you’re a one person entrepreneur, you will typically do more harm than good by micro managing every task that is required of your department. Learning to delegate (properly and clearly) and exhibit leadership is critical to staff development, including your own professional future.