Nowadays, micromanagement is widely regarded as outdated and counterproductive for agile corporate management. But what exactly is behind this management style and how can you recognise it as a managing director? In this blog, we offer you insights into the effects of micromanagement on your business practice and present approaches on how you can effectively counteract this management style.
Do you want to proofread every email before it is sent and do you also want to be in CC? Do you expect your employees to put every presentation on your desk? Then there is a high probability that you are a micromanager.
Micromanagement is a management style in which you are heavily involved in the details of your employees' work. This includes not only checking and correcting work results, but also hastily overruling decisions or opinions of your employees.
This kind of behaviour can lead to your specialists not being able to fulfil their role in the company. Your team's potential remains unutilised and the quality of their work depends heavily on you as a micromanaging manager. The consequence: productivity drops, your employees become increasingly frustrated and tend to resign more quickly.
Steve Job was often criticised for his management style, at least in the public perception. In fact, during his time at Apple, he tried out various forms of corporate management and eventually came to the realisation that he was a good manager: Micromanagement undermines trust! Without trust in the competences of the team, it is difficult to build a company that creates real added value.
In the worst case scenario, micromanagement leads to a toxic corporate culture and results in qualified employees leaving your company. Even more worrying, however, is "internal resignation", where your employees only work to rule and no longer realise their full potential.
However, the negative effects of micromanagement not only extend to your employees and your company, but also directly affect you as a manager. This creates a real lose-lose situation that affects all areas and responsibilities.
Micromanagement has many consequences for your employees. Constant control and monitoring lead to a decrease in motivation, trust and initiative. A poor error culture develops as perfectionism fuels the fear of making mistakes. Increased stress in the workplace also has a negative impact on the mental and physical health of your employees. There is general uncertainty in the team, accompanied by doubts about their own abilities. This not only leads to higher staff turnover, but also to an increase in "internal resignations".
The effects of micromanagement are far-reaching and affect not only the employees concerned, but also the performance of the entire company. The demotivation and possible health problems of your employees lead to a considerable impairment of work performance.
Furthermore, micromanagement nips innovation and imaginative approaches in the bud. If risks and mistakes are to be avoided at all costs, this inhibits the creativity of your team. Obsessive control prevents new ideas from emerging and unfolding, which in the long term can jeopardise your competitiveness and your company's future. Productivity of your company can have an adverse effect.
Micromanagement means that you as a manager become a "bottle neck" and decision-making and solution development are considerably delayed. Why? Your team cannot act independently if you constantly want to keep control of every step. For your team - but also for you - this results in an extremely high workload and a lot of overtime.
In addition, micromanagement is accompanied by dissatisfaction among your employees, sometimes accompanied by a great loss of trust. Your penchant for perfectionism and obsession with control creates an atmosphere in which creativity and initiative have no chance. Instead of keeping an eye on the big picture, you as a manager become bogged down in detail management, which further hinders the effective development of solutions.
As a micromanager, you are convinced that everything has to be done by you. You tend to constantly send emails with detailed instructions and want all processes to run across your desk. You also take on the tasks of your team members yourself (often without being asked).
Managers who practice micromanagement often find it difficult to recognise their own behaviour. Nevertheless, certain symptoms can be observed over time that indicate that you are interfering too much in the way your team works. An increased desire for control, especially in conjunction with your own perfectionism, can be a common sign of micromanagement.
And how do you recognise micromanagement? The following points could be signs:
1. excessive overtime, although there was sufficient time and attention for a topic.
2. more than three correction loops for one result.
3. finished results whose delivery is delayed because the manager cannot find the time to approve them.
4. frustration in the team or strongly apathetic behaviour.
5. high fluctuation and frequent dismissals
Micromanagement can have various causes and takes on different forms. But how can teams and you as a manager successfully counter this phenomenon? How can you introduce an agile management mentality in your company?
Key factors such as trust, empathy and an open feedback culture play a central role here. However, the challenge often lies in carrying out this self-reflection independently. A trusted person in the form of an external coach can provide support and help you to scrutinise yourself critically.
The following seven steps can serve as a guide to establishing micromanagement in your company:
Many managers have paved their way through outstanding expertise. But when they take on a management position, the demands on their role change considerably. It is crucial that managers become aware of this change. In particular, managers who have been in a senior position for a long time often no longer have the most up-to-date expertise. It is therefore essential to take a step back from your own ego. The focus is on your team, while you as a manager should primarily act as a mentor. It is your responsibility to ensure that the best technical experts are on the team. This means putting the team together carefully and promoting professional development.
Thinking in terms of intentions rather than tasks plays a central role here. Instead of creating a detailed to-do list for the team, you should prioritise problems or desired work results in a list. This gives your team the freedom to find the optimal path and the right solution themselves. In this way, you ensure quality by defining clear requirements in advance and only rarely having to make adjustments when presenting the results. In this way, you transfer responsibility for developing the solution to your team and in doing so Supporting from the background.
For managers who are making the transition from a specialist to a leadership role, it is a good idea to view leadership as specialist coaching. Instead of predetermined solutions or clear instructions, you support your team with your expertise. In this way, you can promote the development of your employees and strengthen their skills and motivation. The following measures are helpful here:
- Explain the background to the requirements.
- Do not provide a solution.
- Show several possible solutions and their advantages and disadvantages.
- Give your specialists the freedom to make their own decisions.
- Lead with questions rather than clear statements.
In many teams, there is a lack of technical or content-related knowledge to make truly value-creating decisions. But is it advisable to once again leave all decisions exclusively to the manager? This approach does not solve the problem, but merely shifts it, as the team is not in a position to develop the necessary competences. It is therefore advisable for you as a manager to provide support and gradually hand over responsibility to your team.
An example of the change from direct leadership to "leadership by intention" can be seen in the History of Ricardo Semlerthe CEO of Semco Partners. In the 1980s, he took over the Brazilian company, which had previously been founded by his father. Instead of relying on traditional hierarchical structures, Semler introduced radical changes. At the beginning of his tenure, Semco had clear hierarchies and fixed processes. But Semler realised that this was hindering the team's creativity and productivity. Inspired by ideas of self-organisation and employee participation, he began to decentralise decision-making power. Instead of giving detailed instructions, he encouraged employees to take responsibility themselves.
A decisive moment was when Semler abolished traditional working hours and gave employees the freedom to determine their own working hours. This led to a significant increase in employee satisfaction and productivity. Semco developed into a company based on trust, self-determination and personal responsibility - an example of how a paradigm shift in leadership can lead to positive change.
The basis for trust lies in respectful interaction based on empathy and competence. This means that employees and managers should regularly discuss their collaboration and the work results achieved. You should therefore schedule time for two specific formats at least once a month:
Retrospective: In this format, the focus is on critical reflection of the collaboration, in which team members Constructive feedback give.
Review: In the review, you jointly analyse the work results of the previous period and provide feedback based on this.
In both formats, it is crucial to maintain a respectful approach. The art of constructive feedback requires not only theoretical knowledge, but also practical practice. Empathy plays a central role here, as understanding other people's perspectives requires a view of the context in which they are operating and their individual needs. The SCARF model by David Rock provides a basis for better understanding and categorising these needs.
Instead of having endless discussions about the optimal solution, it is a good idea to take a pragmatic approach and carry out small experiments. Especially if there are two alternative solutions and it is unclear which is the better one. Here you could use the following methods:
1. present prototype solutions to your customers in order to receive direct feedback.
2. carry out A/B testing with processes or project templates to compare the effectiveness of the different approaches.
Mistakes often occur when expectations, goals or requirements have not been clearly communicated. As a consequence, this leads to a loss of trust in management and an increased feeling of insecurity in the team, especially if frequent corrections are required. It is therefore essential to establish clear framework conditions and principles of cooperation.
With a clear strategy and common goals, you provide your team with orientation. They provide information about what the team is working towards and how the individual work contributes to the overall performance of the company. In this way, you create a framework that not only makes work more transparent, but also strengthens trust in your leadership and reduces uncertainty in the team.
An illustrative example of the importance of clear framework conditions and principles in collaboration can be found in the history of the software development company Atlassian. The company has clear values and principles that are known as "Atlassian Playbook" are known. One of these principles is: "Open Company, No Bullshit." This is about being transparent and honest with each other. This clear guideline lets employees know that openness and honesty are valued in the corporate culture. There are clear expectations regarding communication and collaboration.
One concrete use case is the so-called "ShipIt Days" at Atlassian. In these 24-hour events employees have the freedom to work on projects of their choice and realise creative ideas. This not only promotes innovation, but also shows that the company gives its employees the confidence and freedom to act within clearly defined guidelines. The result is often ground-breaking ideas and a strengthened team dynamic based on the company's clear principles.
Mistakes are part of everyday working life and should not be seen as a fundamental problem. However, difficulties arise when you as a manager try to prevent or even penalise mistakes. This type of behaviour puts your team under pressure, which can have a negative impact on motivation and commitment. In the worst case scenario, mistrust towards you will increase.
Change your perspective and develop a growth mindset. Instead of fearing mistakes, you should always start from the potential of success. Victories can be recognised even in mistakes. Your team may discover solutions that would otherwise not have been considered or recognise how a process can be improved.
A useful tool for analysing errors and recognising that coincidences can produce positive results is the Celebration Grid. With this method, you can visualise the results of an experiment or project, regardless of whether it was successful or failed. The Celebration Grid shows how to celebrate successful practices and learn from failures:
- Collect content for the grid as a team.
- Regular meetings to fill in the grid together.
- Simply celebrate the "worst fail".
- Share surprising successes and failures across team boundaries.
By using all-in-one software such as ZEP, you can effectively prevent micromanagement and utilise the benefits of a comprehensive solution for your project management. With our software, you give your team the necessary autonomy for project work, while at the same time keeping an eye on all project progress. ZEP acts as a PSA software with which you can manage your Digitise the entire project business from quotation and planning to automated invoicing.
You and your team seamlessly record all working and project times via app, browser or at our ZEP terminal. Automatically standardised reports and evaluations make it easier to keep track of and analyse these times. Our software is characterised by flexibility and scalability so that it can grow with your company without any problems, regardless of its size.
If you are interested in the topic of project time recording and the effective avoidance of micromanagement and would like to find out more about how ZEP can support your company, please do not hesitate to contact us, to contact us. Our team will be happy to provide you with further information to help you choose the right ZEP solution.
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