In the January 10, 2011 edition of Thinking Management, the American Management Association's management BLOG, they posted the following thoughts about micromanagement:
Micromanagement has garnered an increasingly bad reputation as a management style over the past twenty or so years. Managers are favoring a more "hands off" approach, designed to inspire employees, and give them ownership over their work. There is a fine line, however, between "hands off" and disengagement. Many managers fear the micromanagement taboo so much that employees view them as disinterested in their work...and when employees believes their work doesn?t matter the consequences can be disastrous. The solution? Situational micromanagement.
Independence can be daunting—especially for those just entering the work force or those employees who lack the experience their task requires. Much of the time, the "hands off" management approach works, because the inexperienced employee can learn from those around him or her and gain some excellent skills in the process (balancing teamwork with self-reliance, for one). Sometimes, however, their situation will not afford them this luxury, and that's when you should work with your employee on a task-to-task basis?when their performance is suffering because of inexperience.
Never jump right into micromanagement. The wrong thing to do is immediately draw a conclusion of your employee based solely on his or her experience and micromanage them from the start. If your employee's performance doesn't improve, micromanagement could be to blame.
Remember, the goal of micromanagement is to help your employee reach the point where they no longer need to be micromanaged. If you find that when you give them more freedom and their performance still suffers, you should seriously reconsider their role within the company.
What do you think? Perhaps I am just stuck on their definition of micromanagement. I do not necessarily believe that the opposite of hands off is micromanagement. I think it is probably something like "management". After all isn't that what managers do - manage? Let's not confuse micromanagement or even situational micromanagement with coaching and development - or even directing, all things that managers do and should do. To me, micromanagement is to manage, direct, or control a person, group, or system to an unnecessary level of detail or precision. The operative word in my definition is unnecessary, regardless of the motivation. To add the word situational in front of it doesn't make it any more necessary. So, I'm still fine with the old words and terms.
