Why you may be an unconscious micromanager

There are few guarantees in life, but I am prepared to give you two from the world of management.

I guarantee that if you got 100 employees in a room, the majority would complain of being micromanaged some time during the career.

And I also guarantee that if you got 100 managers in a room, the majority would not admit to being a conscious micromanager.

As business consultant Ron Ashkenas writes at Harvard Business Review, nobody gets up in the morning seeking to be a micromanager, but the impact of this management style can be brutal.

He sees two reasons for this managerial scourge.

Firstly, managers are concerned about becoming disconnected from what is happening on the shop floor and with the customers of their firm. This disconnection from the actual “work” of their business leads them to seek reports, analysis and one-on-one conversations from their direct reports. This can often manifest itself in what appears to subordinates to be micromanaging – even if it is not intended that way.

Secondly, some managers fail to make the transition from the operational to the strategic.

“Many managers are promoted based on their ability to achieve operational goals, manage budgets, control their numbers, and solve problems. However, at higher levels managers usually need to dial down their operational focus and learn how to be more strategic,” Ashkenas argues.

“To do so, managers have to trust their people to manage day-to-day operations and coach them as needed, rather than trying to do it for them. For many managers this is a difficult transition and they unconsciously continue to spend time in the more comfortable operational realm of their subordinates.”

If you are seeing any of yourself in what Askenas is describing, it might be time to rethink your personal managerial style.

A 70% rule

John Riccitiello, chief executive of Electronic Arts, has faced his fair share of managerial challenges in the last few years.

Not only has he had to contend with the deterioration of the US economy, but he has also had to steer his company through the seismic shift from traditional video games to those delivered via the internet, mobile communications and social media.

In an interview with The New York Times, Riccitiello admits this has sometimes made it hard to paint a picture of where the business is heading – and to bring his team along on that journey.

“I’ve often said to people: ‘This is only 70% clear because that’s as clear as it can be. But you have to commit to it 100%, and understand that we’re going to pull back and adjust when we learn something’s not working’.

“I remember getting a question a year and a half ago: ‘Why do we have 15 things going on here if we don’t know which ones are going to work?’ And I said, ‘Here’s the way this is going to work: If certain things work, we’re going to do more of them, and if other things don’t work, we’re going to stop doing them. And in no time at all, 80% of what we’re doing is going to work because it’s very easy to quickly eliminate the failures, and we should not be afraid of that’.”

This little 70% rule is attractive. No leader can really pretend to have complete clarity over the outlook and vision for their company – this honesty is refreshing.

Great management reads

The Australian Institute of Management magazine Management Today has a great article on the top 10 management reads of all time.

There are plenty of old favourites there, including the classic portrait of the management buyout craze of the 1980s, Barbarians At The Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, and Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jerry Porras and the legendary Jim Collins.

But at the top of the list is Michael Porter’s influential work, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors.

“In Competitive Strategy, Porter refers to the five key forces: new competitors, threat of substitute products, the bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers, and the intensity of competition,” article author Tom Skotnicki writes.

“The five forces are only designed to be a starting point for analysis. Ultimately strategy has to depend on individual circumstances, but it is designed to help illuminate fundamental issues that can determine strategy and tactics.”