Why You Should Never Micromanage Your Employees – By Bizna Brand Analyst
It is with no doubt that the management style you adopt in your business/company as a manager/owner determines its success as a whole. There are several systems or styles of management, but in this article I am going to look at a management system known as micromanagement.
What is micromanagement?
As the name suggests, it basically means management on a minute scale. To elaborate, micromanagement can be defined as the management style whereby a superior (manager) imposes excessive control or monitoring on his/her subordinate. The manger or superior usually gives little or no opportunity for his subordinate to take any decision on their own without consulting him first, hence concentrating on minute details in the organization.
In micromanagement system, the micro manager often tends to involve himself in every aspect of the day to day activities of the organization, giving no room for subordinates to influence activities or make decisions.
Most micro managers tend not to notice their “over protective” system of management as they see it as an effective means of achieving perfection in the organization. To a certain extent achieving perfection from the point of view of the micro manager may be right, however, should focusing on minute areas of your company/business at the expense of other important issues be the best in achieving growth?
Disadvantages of the micromanagement style
One major characteristics of a micro manager is his failure to delegate to his subordinates. Delegation is one of the keys to the success of an organization as delegation allows managers to pass on some portion of their work load to capable subordinates as they concentrate on other important issues in the organization.
Micro managers are usually irritated when their subordinates make decisions without consulting them, and this some times tends to kill the initiative skills of workers/subordinates in the organization, as workers are scared of taking initiatives.
Another shortcoming of micromanagement is that it provides job insecurity to employees, as employees are afraid that due to the management style of the organization, their jobs may be on the line as they feel that management does not look at other important areas of the organization which would bring organizational growth and improved conditions of work to the employees.
Yes it is true that when an employee sees that his manager (employer) is only focusing on trivial issues in the organization instead of looking at broader areas leaving him (employee) to do that (the trivial issues) only means that those other important issues wouldn’t be taken care of; hence the company might not be able to survive for the foreseeable future.
Another disadvantage of the micromanagement system is that since it kills employee initiative, it would only have a retardation of the growth of the employee so many employees would jump bus at any available job opportunity that comes their way.
So what is the meaning of “jumping at any opportunity” to the micro manager? What it simply means is that there would be a high labor turnover in the organization which is not healthy for the organization.
