“Employees are a company’s greatest asset. They’re your competitive advantage. You want to attract and retain the best; provide them with encouragement, stimulus, and make them feel that they are the integral part of the company’s mission.” – Anne C.Mulcahy
Micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes or controls the work of his subordinates or employees. Micromanagement has generally negative connotation. And a micromanager is a person who gives excessive supervision to his employees, watches their actions closely and provides rapid criticism. Micromanagement is bad for the employees, as they suffer from being disturbed and demoralized. Micromanagement is a not a good idea. Let’s take a detailed look at how it does not find a good fit in a business and bad for the employees.
As the first consideration, it must be noted that human beings do not inherently dislike work. Every person has different motivations for working. Since he gets something from work, he would like to work. That something may be personal goals, money or something important. The specific objective is to be accomplished from working; individuals have to work and carry out their related tasks whether or not they are being watched. Also, there is a correlation between the remuneration and the desirable productivity; it makes sense that one has to perform his or her duties in a manner that is expected of in order to earn remuneration. If that’s the case in almost all the situations, then, there should not be any space for close supervision. In this way, micromanagement does not seem to have a good fit, rather, it’s a mismanagement, as it shows that employees are not being trusted.
In micromanagement, a manager breathes down his employees’ neck by paying extreme attention to small details. He looks down upon his employees. It gives such impression that the employees are not capable enough to perform the tasks, as such, he tends to make his own decisions without allowing them to make the decisions. He does not seem to place confidence in his employees or in their good qualities. When the qualities, like, fairness, truth, honor or ability are not recognized, employees begin to lose their passion and hopes for the future. And this loss of hope is exacerbated by the state in which they are micromanaged constantly.
When an individual makes a start his career wishing for his professional progress and becomes a part of an organization, brings along him a bundle of hopes and ambitions. While winning his livelihood by the sweat of his brow, he wishes to develop his skills being desirous of gaining prestige and position. His vision is to become what he is willing to be on the basis of what is capable of. Being committed to organizational goals, he puts all his sincere efforts and loyalty and hard-work and productiveness and diligence. Despite all these things, if opportunities are eliminated or not provided, he may not only start to lose hope but to find better opportunities. Such is the case under micromanagement. It leads to eliminate opportunities to develop the workforce through proper delegation.
All in all, if one thinks as per his conventional wisdom, he would definitely disfavor micromanaging people, because micromanaging does not do any good but harm the organization in which it’s practiced. It does not lead to produce good results, but raises complaints and creates discontent and displeasure. It must be noted that, in the worst case scenario, micromanagement hurts the organization as a whole, because it leads to spoil the team spirit and productivity and performance.
Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India
Professional Articles on Business & Management, Management Consulting, Software Engineering and Self Improvement 