The destructive potential of micromanagement: quiet quitting

Micromanagement and quiet quitting [*]

Wanting to always be at the center or be involved in every decision on the one hand and disinterested or absent for too long on the other, are two behaviours that a good manager should try to avoid. Seeking the collaboration of your managers while keeping their motivation high is an art that not all the tops possess. We might wonder why there are so many CEOs or presidents who fail to tune into all their first levels, much less get closer to the grassroots: the dynamics of the rise to power travel roads sometimes invisible to most, and often inexplicable, all the more so as the organizations are extensive.

The fact is that there is always a number of managers to whom things always seem to be going well, so placidly slipped into their daily routine, and probably would not change anything for 30 years in a row.

The character of company managers, on the other hand, is very much affected by the nature of the business that is conducted: I could say that a company dedicated to the industrial production of something conceived and designed elsewhere will necessarily form a series of supervisors and managers not inclined to changes, innovations, especially when the company emblem is reliability and quality, granite constant over time, although in continuous improvement. In such companies it is vital to get used to working according to rigid procedural schemes.

It is certain that, within every apparently solid and close-knit company, there are dissatisfied components. It is impossible to quantify the percentage, but the more companies begin to suffer from gigantism syndrome, the more it rises. It goes without saying that in stable companies, with social protections and financially sound, the motivational level tends to decrease gradually.

The motivation that is lowered is the cancer of the enterprise. In the long run, the business branches affected by demotivation become dry and will have to undergo unpleasant care such as cuts, transfers or closures; This is because inevitably in companies where the determination to achieve the objectives is lacking, these will not be achieved.

Self-motivation

A small percentage of managers do not need to be induced by someone else the "desire" to act for the corporate good: creatives, innovators, increasingly rare and precious, are people who should never be missing in the beating heart of the company. They are motivators, typically incurable optimists, visionaries and accept challenges of all kinds. This small circle of people do not need to be motivated: they act spontaneously.

Motivate through goals

For the majority it is not so: in order to give their best, they must feel involved in a team game that highlights their merits and brings them to the fore. A nice contribution to the growth of motivation is the definition and sharing of one's goals. The awareness of one's own goals and the true understanding of the objectives of the rest of the company departments is crucial. I remember how an enlightened president (enlightening ...) for the first time set up the “walk of pride”, a corridor where all company departments published their targets and strategic plans, explained synthetically, set to achieve these objectives. In doing so, everyone was directly aware that their work was fundamental to the success of another department and vice versa: the walk of pride opened up a little to all eyes on the true meaning of teamwork. With the objectives to be achieved in mind, the motivation remains on average at a good level and, if the objectives are set in the SMART type [**], things will go in the right direction.

The art of making their collaborators in turn planners and creators of their projects is the basis of the motivational increase and the growth in them of the self-esteem. This is no small matter. At the base there is probably the ability to establish an easy communication, in which one seeks the other and vice versa without obstacles, hesitations or formalisms or referential fears, outside the corporate schematism’s and ritual phrases: provided that first there are no language barriers.

Wanting to interfere personally in every business activity is not an indicator of corporate attachment, nor of one's professionalism. Rather, it is a behaviour that transpires a lot of insecurity and above all lack of trust in one's collaborators. While the former is a feature that should be analysed and potentially improved with exercise or precise targeted techniques (...), lack of confidence is the perfect weapon for corporate suicide.

It is nothing more than the long, sometimes very long, wave of a HR strategy of choosing employees that is not aimed at growth. The hiring process must target people who are increasingly capable, forward-looking, open to change, intelligent and emotionally uncomplicated. Companies that fail to develop a high-profile human resources policy, able to engage resources with these characteristics, lend themselves to being conquered by increasingly micromanagers, forced to personally manage organizations no longer accustomed to creating plans independently. From here to the corporate "dictatorship", the step is not that long. In a company run by micromanagers, characters always ready to obey make their way, accustomed to accepting "nos" without the possibility of alternatives, often having to digest incomprehensible explanations. The company is inexorably plastered and transformed into an automaton.

It goes without saying that the question arises as to why insecure or unenlightening managers occupy important positions: one thinks that they themselves belong to a higher-level micromanagement chain. It is often random to be in the right place at the right time, that is, in contact with a manager who leaves freedom to decide and, why not, to make a mistake within reasonable limits; We need to recognize these opportunities, take advantage of those bosses who intend to trust and give responsibility and visibility: these are the moments in which we become architects of our professional growth.

How to avoid having to become micromanagers?

The PDCA must be applied harmoniously, even using it less rigidly.

If we are confident that we have a team that is up to the task and motivated, it is wise to clearly define the objectives, collective and even individual. You don't get good if you don't make mistakes and learn from mistakes; everyone says it, but when it comes to giving space to someone when the probability of failure is high, you need to put it in the budget and be able to parry the blow.

It is therefore necessary to give objectives commensurate with a possible or probable failure to achieve them.

It is a duty to expose one's collaborators and follow the progress of the projects without claiming to correct them by authority. Asking for feedback in an informal way is a tactic to mitigate an often suffocating presence and also it serves to get out of the formal report schemes in which often the tendency is to improve things fictitiously. Every now and then an advice thrown there, if on the other side there is the ability to steal it, helps to correct things and lightens that often unbearable attitude on the part of micromanagers to underestimate the considerations or decisions of others from the top of his "I know everything, I decide everything ..."

Reacting to micromanagement and its consequences

At the base of a micromanager there is typically a very deep knowledge of the subject: so, finding a micromanager on your professional growth path can be frustrating on one hand, nevertheless it can be stimulating and challenging at the same time, in the sense that to gain his trust it is necessary to study a lot and bring oneself to a technical level at least considerable. If you are not able to dialogue on par or about from a technical point of view, it will be very difficult to get rid of micromanagement. At this point we need to frankly ask ourselves what work status we are more comfortable with: a situation where we are more inclined to accept other people's decisions to avoid a priori comparisons or be freer to plan, decide and start from mistakes generated by ourselves? Static or dynamism? Curling up in our comfort zone or getting rid of the caps to discover the goodness of our decisions without impositions? It can be deduced that micromanagement in itself is not an objective evil: indeed, in the vast majority of cases it can lead to lasting situations of stability, as in all organizations where there is an absolute and recognized leader: even more so if the boss, as well as micromanager, is also enlightened.

Working under micromanagement can become a de-responsibility; for the condescending it is something positive and strangely reassuring: they do their job, they are rarely interested in their opinion being taken into account and often the work is not at the top of their priorities. This condition inevitably becomes frequent the closer we get to the base of the company pyramid: as you climb the steps of the organization, the latent discomfort of being micromanaged begins to appear, generating a spectrum of more or less latent behaviours.

The distant: they feel increasingly distant from a company that involves them little in business strategies, despite having often accumulated years of experience that they would consider useful to the company

The deconcentrated: having to work without a voice, they tend to absent themselves mentally and often run into errors due to lack of focus

The minimal: they work well, but they do not push to increase their performance beyond sufficiency, being able to do so

The protesters: their sense of discomfort cannot turn into at least collaborative behaviour and they let themselves go to attitudes of protest; they often become impatient towards colleagues

Submissives: they defer to the decisions of others in a condescending manner without interfering or improving the status quo

The succubi: internalize the discomfort of being micromanaged and become dead weights for the company

Introvert: expansive outside the company walls, they become almost asocial and hardly find the energy in themselves and become sources of improvement for the organization

The surrendering: they lose their will to act and fight against business problems

The presence of all these moods within the organization is a loser: many call it the “quite quitting”: micromanagement is one of its the root causes.

Wisdom and patience (if these virtues have been cultivated over time) come to the aid in the presence of a sense of responsibility and loyalty towards the company rather than towards the director, the direct manager or the CEO who has not been able to act beyond micromanagement. There is always a way out and therefore a situation in which you can stay positive to give your best. Working life is often made up of cycles and one must avoid headshots or impulsive reactions against organizations that work well, overall. If we believe in ourselves more than anything else, welcome the break and the beginning of new work challenges, obviously trying to treasure the experience and trying to promote the MBO (Management by Objectives) rather than the MBR (Management by Report).

[*] PDIA = Privo Di Intelligenza Artificiale – Free of IA

[**] SPECIFIC (specifico), MEASURABLE (misurabile), ACHIEVABLE (raggiungibile), RELEVANT (rilevante), TIME-BASED (basato sul tempo).