Micromanaging and disengagement - Managers worry about being disconnected, employees feel their judgment is not trusted
As managers rise through the ranks, they often become concerned that they’ve lost touch with the actual work of the organization. Because they have less direct contact with the shop floor or customers, they start to feel isolated. One way of reducing this anxiety is to seek information in as many ways as possible — through reports, meetings, and one-on-one conversations. But since this attempt to stay connected is largely unplanned and driven by idiosyncratic anxiety, the result is that managers at different levels and functions end up looking at the same basic data in many different ways.
…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.
NOTES
We all want to know the status, but we don’t have the time to waste building materials just to convey it. It should be conveyed by the work execution process.
…typically, it has nothing to do with performance
“It’s more about your bosses’ level of internal anxiety and need to control situations than anything about you,” says Jenny Chatman, a professor of management at Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley
Fundamentally, it is a state of distance from one’s work. A disengaged employee puts in time but little else, and his apathy affects not only his own productivity but that of his colleagues. Because a consistent pattern of micromanagement tells an employee you don’t trust his work or his judgment, it is a major factor in triggering disengagement.
And disengagement is costly.
- Ron Ashkenas
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