You either develop your leaders so that they don't micromanage. Or you redesign your organization and define rules of the game impeding micromanagement in the first place.
Micromanagement - meaning an over-controlling, over-observing, and constantly commenting leadership style of overseeing subordinates, which violates the fundamentals of delegation - is widely understood to be an evil in modern organizations. And yet it is widespread.
And it is widespread even though managers understand perfectly well the problems with micromanaging, and even though most managers could probably explain nicely, in theory, how to avoid micromanaging and how to delegate well.*
It is also obvious that micromanaging at work impedes motivation, creativity, and employee well-being. Having a boss who micromanages and displays the behaviors mentioned above is one of the worst (albeit permissible) attitudes from superiors one could encounter in the workplace.
Based on our experiences from our organization design and consulting work, we believe that there are two key approaches to reducing micromanagement in your workplace. Ideally, those two approaches work together and strengthen each other.
One approach focuses on individual leader behavior, the other on the very structure of your organization and the way decisions are made. One changes managerial behavior, one changes the management system, and both work to stop micromanagement practices.
First approach: Developing your leaders so that a micromanagement leadership style is prevented
One option is to develop the right leadership capabilities in your organization so that leaders can detect and suppress micromanaging behaviors for themselves and for the middle managers they oversee (Canner and Bernstein describe why and how micromanagement is “infectious” along an organization’s chain of command).
As an organizational intervention and learning approach, focusing on micromanaging in your leadership development work must ensure that leadership learning happens on the job, is based on productive feedback, and can draw on adequate resources in order to be effective.
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Structuring your organization and its decision-making to address the causes of micromanagement
A second and complementary option is to work on your organization design and decision-making to prevent micromanagement.
This can have different levels of formality. You could simply describe key elements of sound delegation practices, e.g. the sponsor role, the owner role, elements of a good brief, and principles of functional oversight,** and compile them in a guide that management is expected to follow in their team leadership. Employee surveys and 360 degree feedback could check whether leaders are adhering to this guidance.
A more principled and fundamental approach is to work towards a higher level of self-management in your organization. To do this, you grant clearly defined levels of decision-making authority along select management functions to individual roles, thereby preventing micromanagement from the start. Such an approach requires careful consideration and an organization design that has been thought through.
Work with the management functions matrix to stop micromanagement
Such structures have to be enacted by leaders, so the development of leadership capabilities discussed above is beneficial, if not required, in any case.
Being micromanaged at work is not just a nuisance: it seriously inhibits organizational effectiveness and the personal development of your talent pool. Senior leaders and their business partners in HR and OD should take the problems of micromanagement seriously and leverage both their leadership development initiatives and their organization design work to stop micromanaging employees.
References
* Mats Alvesson and Stefan Sveningsson: Good Visions, Bad Micro-management and Ugly Ambiguity: Contradictions of (Non-)Leadership in a Knowledge-Intensive Organization, Organization Studies 24(6): 961–988.
** Niko Canner and Ethan Bernstein: Why Is Micromanagement So Infectious? Harvard Business Review, August 17, 2016.
