That’s really the opposite of what “more accountable” means. Holding your employees accountable means you give them assignments with clear objectives, actionable tasks, well defined deadlines and parameters for completion and then have them go at it. The purpose of having regular checkpoints and status updates is so you can identify issues prior to 5 minutes before the project is due and hopefully take steps to resolves those issues. They actually have a stupid business acronym for this - SMART: Specific – Measurable – Actionable – Realistic – Time Bound. Or to put it in normal people terms, tell someone what you want them to do, how you want it done and when you want it by. Then if it doesn’t get done, you have something tangible to point at and say “what happened here”?
The problem, IMHO, is that so many managers really have no idea how to do anything or how it gets done. Before I got my MBA, I had a degree in Civil (Structural) Engineering. Compared to my B-school classmates, I was a freakin genius when it came to both math and project management. Unlike the business world where most “deliverables” are reports, Powerpoint decks and maybe some IT system integrations, you can’t just grab a bunch of 22 year olds and say “I need this 20 story skyscraper by next thursday!”. It has to be thought out and planned.
So what I’ve found in my career is most managers will prefer to sit in their office, only engage with their peers or superiors and either constantly “crack the whip” to get their underlings to do what they need done or hire a consultant or more junior manager to either do it for them or take the blame when it doesn’t work.
My boss would micromanage everyone. Then gripe, “Do I have to do EVERYTHING around here???” Then if you if you went to get her assent to a minor detail (because no one is allowed to handle a minor detail) would rip you for not being able to make the most basic of decisions. Then if you made a judgement call on a minor issue, would rip you and tell you that she really wanted you to do it her way and “you should just know! I shouldn’t have to tell you these things!”
Yeah, as people imply, you basically have two kinds of micromanagers:
One who either is just nervous in a new position or has been told to micromanage or both. This one can eventually be dealt with. When she sees you’re doing a fine job and can handle yourself and she gets comfortable in her position, she’ll ease off. This is where the super-cheerful enthusiastic attitude comes in.
Batshit crazy. You can’t do anything about this but hunker down and do your work really well, or he’ll find a reason to fire your ass. You may end up quitting, if it gets really bad.
I recently went through this when we got a new Director in spring. We had to start tracking our time in 10-min increments. Her demands became more and more ridiculous, to the point that three people quit. (This might have been the point - they are not replacing them.)
The plus side is that it drove me to seek other work, and I’ve been interviewing for jobs with significant salary increases. Also, the people in the level above me had a talk where they explained that she needed to dial it back, and she actually did (no more 10-min spreadsheet). I understand that a new director needs to know what is actually going on, but it does make the workplace miserable when you feel like you can’t pee without asking. I actually really enjoy my job, but it did give me a nice kick-in-the-pants to explore other options. So maybe you could casually start looking, so that if it doesn’t get better you have an escape plan.
Remarkably, and I’ve been in the workforce for…almost 20 years, so I guess I still have time - I’ve only seen a couple of batshit people. They sure stand out in the mind, but there aren’t as many as one would think!
In every single company where I’ve had to do that, we had a single project / line item to assign work to and to list 8h/day no matter what. You tell me how does having people do that provide any actual information.
I have started looking. As a matter of fact, I landed a pretty good side job that pays really well and has a real potential to become a regular, full-time position if I want it to. And, aside from this current bullshit with my new Micromanaging Director, I have a really good job. So, it’s not all bad. I just need to maintain my equilibrium and deal with the added stress of being micromanaged.
ETA: Having that side job, the money it brings in and the confidence that if Job 1 actually fires me, Job 2 can become Job 1 (or keep me afloat through a job search) has helped me a LOT during this whole thing so far.
A lot of them hide it pretty well. I have been stunned over the course of the past two years at the No-Kidding Crazy I’ve witnessed. Previous to this it had only been an odd one or two, as you say.
I quit a part-time job a few years ago now due to a micro-managing crazy lady. She had the offices set up so she could watch me all the time, and she wanted to know what I was doing every second of every day, and didn’t like me doing anything that wasn’t exactly how she did it, even if my way was actually more efficient and didn’t affect her or the actual work done at all. It has taken a surprisingly long time to get over the crazy.
I must be missing something, because that doesn’t look to me like “micromanagement.” It looks like “management.” But let me check with my girlfriend, who spends her days figuring out what the hell her company has been doing for the past decade because no one bothered to track anything at all.
If it were twice a day I’d see your point, but twice a week doesn’t strike me as particularly onerous (though once a week is probably all that’s necessary).
When you say that what I hear (or, er, read) is, “I’m a good employee in a way that somehow doesn’t actually look good when it’s written down.”
To me, these are examples of micromanaging. “Show me every e-mail you send” is micromanaging.
“Keep us in the loop about what you do during the time we are paying for your availability” is not micromanaging.
I mean, I don’t want to have to send reports up, but I understand why they might seem necessary.
Our program manager is that way. She isn’t exactly our boss, just the boss of all the projects. She doesn’t do it to be a bitch though, she’s just THAT nervous and afraid that something is going to go wrong. She’s often reminding us of the simplest things, (I have to bite my tongue to not snark "thank YOU Captain Obvious), but I wouldn’t do that because it would hurt her feelings.
But yes, it’s INSANELY annoying I feel for you. The only thing that helps is just to pretty much ignore it and kind of do what Aanamika suggested and just be all nice about it (and make mad fun of him on the inside then come here and share it with us).
I don’t know where you work (Burger King? Circle K?) but I am accustomed to autonomy in my work, which is interrupt-oriented and requires a great deal of multitasking. It’s probably easy to account for your time if you’re flipping burgers for a 6 hour shift, but my work demands a high degree of technical know-how, institutional knowledge, creativity and leadership skills. It is often difficult to quantify my time because, in the course of an hour, I’ve provided technical direction to a direct report, fixed the SAN, reasearched some details of necessary technical implementation and had a conference call with the Apps team to help them forecast disk space utilization over the next year.
Just like any other activity in the workplace, management is supposed to serve a purpose. If the boss is asking for status reports and doesn’t even read them (like my boss does), then that means these status reports are a waste of time. If the status reports are being read but nothing of constructive consequence results from this information, then again they are a waste of time. It doesn’t matter if the status report is requested only twice a week. If it takes more time and effort to do the report than what is gained from the report itself, then management is running their shop inefficiently.
Keeping the boss informed is not a business goal upon itself, because the boss is not a customer. The boss is a cog in the machine along with everyone else. If the boss is just sitting there, waiting for his busy subordinates to tell him/her what they’re doing, then this kind of boss might as well be a secretary. A good boss is engaged enough with the work to have a comfortable sense of where things are at any given moment, and if they don’t know, then they know whom to ask. They don’t wait for their people to tell them about problems that require their attention; rather, they periodically check in with staff to make sure everything is okay. And if the boss is really effective, staff will volunteer information about their work so the boss doesn’t even have to ask. If you have to get your people to write status reports twice a week just to get them to “talk” to you, that’s a sign that you might not be the best fit for that job.
It is management’s job to get off its ass and ask the necessary questions. If management is responsible for knowing what is going on, then they should figure out how to do that without creating unnecessary work for their staff. Otherwise, they are just getting in the way.
Oh, yeah, I’ve worked for people just like these two bosses.
The one Carol the Impaler mentioned is the worst. You can’t make a decision on your own or you get in trouble for not consulting her, then if you go to her to make a decision, you get ripped into for not doing it on your own.
And I’m dealing with the one mentioned by Cat Whisperer right now. There are a couple different ways to do the work, and in the end it doesn’t really matter how the work gets done as long as it gets done, but nooooo… she wants it done her way. Which it the least efficient way. :smack:
Not to be insensitive, but it gives you a little insight into why people go on workplace shooting sprees.
I’m between a rock and a hard place right now with micromanaging. We’ve moved from only timetracking billable hours to timetracking all hours. This has become a company-wide policy, and I’m guessing largely because of some, uh, budgetary concerns from other departments and they’re playing fair by making it for everyone.
Anyway, we’ve also had a shake-up in my department with someone very crucial leaving the company, and as a result, while things are getting sorted out and management realizes just how crucial that person really was, new business is a little thin. This means my mandatory timetracking looks, well, less than favourable. And I know my direct supervisor understands the issues behind it and doesn’t consider it my fault, but the higher-ups just see overhead costs.
