Micromanagement 101

I get a lot of mail here at the old Hellhole asking me that age-old question: "Do you work at my company?"

The answer is blowin in the wind, my friends. The answer is blowin in the wind.

Many of you are experiencing the agony of employment under a "leadership" team composed of insecure, smart people. Being smart can be a huge liability to someone whose ambition is greater than their management skills. Strangely enough, smart people are not necessarily perceptive when it comes to human motivation. They believe that everyone is either ambitious like themselves OR they are dumb.

The best managers are not geniuses. They start out as ordinary folks who realize that you can get a lot of stuff done if you can articulate a goal and then get out of the way to let your team members do their jobs. They ask for a status report every two weeks. Their main form of questioning is "How can I help you?" instead of "How long is that gonna take?"

Good managers are organized; and they are able to show other how to be organized. (For the record, this was my biggest personal flaw as a manager. I am congenitally disorganized and like it that way.)

Good managers have a sense of urgency plus a personal style that gets others to share the desire to get things done on time. (Another failing of mine. I was born without a sense of urgency, and deadline is a word that I find annoying rather than challenging)

Good managers recognize that not everyone is motivated by the same things. Most of us are still emotionally retarded and desperately seek some evidence that someone somewhere appreciates what we are doing. However, a lot of us are perfectly happy with the anonymity of a large bureaucracy and can reamain happy malingering indefinitely while waiting for our pensions to kick-in.

I recall a quote from WWII General George S. Patton, which distills all relevent management theory in a single sentence. Patton said "Every man needs a pat on the back every now and then; some men need it high, other men need it low." He was a genius.

Unfortunately, those smart, insecure people that have risen to "leadership" positions in your company are just victims of the Peter Principle. This means that they probably got promoted from a job where they really were competent into a job where they suck. They are trapped.

In their hearts, they may suspect that they suck in the new job , but cannot accept the possibility that everyone else might share that opinion - especially those higher up in the food chain. So, they work harder. Hard work always made them successful in the past, before they got into management.

So, they become hapless workaholics. Micromanagers delude themselves into the belief that they must be the best brave to earn the title of Chief. They need to know more than everyone else. Everything that happens must be their idea. They come to assume that everyone on their team is sitting around, waiting to be told what to do next.

For those of us who are mature, competent workers, micromanagers suck all the joy and sense of accomplishment out of working. We become seduced into following the easy path of going along, letting the boss have his way without resistance. We end-up as mere followers-of-orders, eroding our own self-esteem, doing exactly what we are told, assuming no ownership, no sense of responsibility and no loyalty to the job at hand.

Eventually, most Micromanagers will burn themselves out, or - if they are lucky - smarten up before they crash and burn. However that damage they do to their organizations and subordinates echoes for a long time.