Different ways to micromanage

In high school, we had “hall monitors” whose job was to patrol the hallways and maintain order in the school corridors. They typically checked to see if students who were outside of the classrooms when they should have been in the class had a hall pass. And they tried to maintain overall good conduct in the hallways by preventing rowdy behaviour.

Hall monitors were like “robo” security guards out to enforce the school’s rules.

They weren’t very popular. And whenever you ran into one in the hallway, you were sure to be questioned. I guess they assumed you were guilty until proven innocent.

In researching for my next book, Leadership: Dubai Style, I came across an entirely different type of monitoring — micro-monitoring.

For example, the billionaire Majid Al Futtaim, shopping mall and retail pioneer, walks his malls every week. Not for leisure — as many chose a mall as a place for light exercise or to shop, or even window shop. He walks to observe and monitor what is happening.

Is everything happening as it should? It is clear that he believes he can get a better read on his business by being on the “shop floor” than from reading a report behind his desk.

This leadership practice made me wonder, “Should leaders be micro-monitors?” Theثث word, or any practice resembling it, evokes dreadful images of the “micromanaging” boss. But micro-monitoring is different — it is what leaders do proactively and informally to make sure their employees, teams and organisation will deliver.

This leadership practice helps others succeed, which is the job of the leader.

Micromanaging is when the boss closely observes and controls, excessively so, the work of subordinates. A micromanager gives too much attention to the minor details, telling their employees what to do and then how to do it, every tiny bit.

He dictates how a job should be done regardless of whether that way is the most effective or efficient one. For a micro-manager there is only one way to do things — his way.

The monitor does not focus how the work is being done, just that it is.

Micromanagement frequently involves requests for unnecessary and overly detailed reports as a means of “checking” up. This formal, after-the-fact approach rarely ever leads to achieving results.

Think about it — a report after the fact says what has been done or not done. At this point, there is nothing you can do other than state the obvious — you didn’t deliver. Wouldn’t an employee already know this?

Of course, they would.

Micromanagers tend to require constant and detailed performance reports focusing excessively on procedural trivia. And not on overall performance, quality and results, which is what Majid Al Futtaim focuses on. Rather than sit behind his desk and rely on detailed reports, he monitors.

A focus on “low-level” trivia clouds overall objectives, confusing the worker about what is important and often delays actions. Many micromanagers accept such inefficiencies in hopes of retaining control or of the appearance of control.

A pattern of micromanagement suggests to employees that a manager does not trust their work or judgement; it is a major factor in triggering employee disengagement, often to the point of promoting dysfunction in which one or more managers, or even management, are labelled “control freaks”.

Disengaged employees invest time, but not effort or creativity, in the work in which they are assigned.

There is one other type of leadership “micro” – “micro-doing”, where leaders take “control” to an extreme and actually do the work for their employees. In the midst of frustration seeing that what should be happening — or isn’t happening — he turns hands-on and performs the duties assigned to an employee.

When a boss performs a worker’s job more efficiently than the worker does, the result is merely suboptimal. The organisation suffers lost opportunities because the leader would serve the organisation better by doing his own job.

Clearly micromanaging and micro-doing are a leadership mistake. Whereas what Majid Al Futtaim and other Dubai leaders do — micro-monitoring — spurs delivery.

When I learnt about “monitoring” being such a prevalent leadership practice in Dubai, I asked, “Do you think Dubai would be what it is today without this type of monitoring?” The immediate reply was “No!”

— The writer is a leadership adviser and author of ‘10 Tips for Leading in the Middle East’. Follow him on Twitter: @tommyweir.