Micro-managers kill productive pursuit.
Entrepreneurs and micro-managers don’t
As an entrepreneur, I found moving from one project or problem to another easy. When I had to report to micro-managers, I found it most challenging to maintain the excitement and momentum for the project I was working on. No one likes to be micro-managed. It’s frustrating, demoralising and demotivating. Yet, some managers can’t seem to help themselves. Dealing with a controlling boss who doesn’t trust you is tough, but what if you do the micro-managing?
I know that I am not a micro-manager simply because when I have to manage the details, I feel excessive entrepreneurial pressure. This causes me and others I have worked with or observed over the years to carefully analyse the workload involved in a project before committing to it. If one thing causes me stress and slows me down, it is having a ‘shopping list’ of small, unrelated tasks to the main projects I am working on.
In business, micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes or controls the work of subordinates or employees. Micromanagement generally has negative connotations and quickly leads to an unstable and disillusioned workforce. It restricts the ability of micro-managed people to develop and grow. It also limits what the micromanager’s team can achieve because everything has to go through the micromanager.
The worst thing you can do to an entrepreneur
Micro-managing is one of the worst things you can do to an entrepreneur. It is an unproductive level of involvement in their entrepreneurial work. An excessive need for control, nit-picking, and attention to unnecessary details is generally an unpleasant overall experience and severely impedes the entrepreneur’s attributes. These are characteristics that the micro-managers lack and are looking for in the first place to make their projects successful.
Don’t let micromanagers stop you from finding the magic in your work, business, or project. Micromanagers always tend to stay at the level of competence they understand. They don’t want you to make them look stupid or to shine above them. Micromanagement is a failed strategy, and underlying the need to micromanage is usually a fear of failure.
How to identify micro-management.
If you have given a good employee or contractor a critical task and a deadline. Do you let them do their work and chat with them at pre-determined points? Or do you keep dropping by and sending e-mails to check their progress? If it’s the latter, you may be a micro-manager. Or, if you’re the harassed person trying to meet a deadline with a boss hovering over you, you might have a micro-manager on your hands.
Quotable quotes
“Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream; you gotta protect it. When people can’t do something themselves, they’re gonna tell you that you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period”. Will Smith.
“Micro-managing is one of the worst things you can do to an entrepreneur. Not only is it unproductive, it severely impedes the entrepreneur’s attributes, attributes that a micro-manager lacks and was looking for in the first place”. Peter Sergeant