Hi there, it’s me, Matt.
I want to get published in Harvard Business Review.
Plenty of MBA-types (strategists, economists, psychologists, consultants, investors, and product managers) write in Harvard Business Review (HBR). But no designers (or design managers) write in HBR. I want to change that.
So I recently sat down and wrote about management. Micromanagement, specifically (And game theory. I wanted to make sure HBR would eat this up). I edited, re-wrote, got feedback, edited, re-wrote again, then bit my lip and submitted the essay.
I got a rejection slip the next day.
Down but not out, I submitted the essay to MIT Sloan Management Review (maybe I could use that a springboard into HBR!). Rejected again. Inc. Magazine, FastCompany, Forbes, rejected, rejected, rejected.
So the essay I’m sharing today is either:
Either way, I have my own website, so the suckers at those other websites can’t stop me from publishing it.
Here’s a song. As usual, you can skip to the jump and read this essay on my website.
Let’s do this.
Here’s a riddle: Nobody I’ve ever worked with likes micromanagement. Yet, on every team I’ve been on, there is at least one micromanager. How is this possible?
Harvard Business Review says, “Micromanage at Your Peril.” Forbes says “Micromanaging is one of the most damaging habits an executive can have.” Inc. says “Micromanagement is a major source of inefficiency and frustration in most work environments.”
If micromanagement is so bad, why does it persist? At a time where companies monitor and quantify every aspect of employees’ productivity, how can such a harmful practice survive?
Business journals and management books tend to focus exclusively on the psychological and interpersonal causes of micromanagement: anxiety, performance pressure, politics, and misaligned incentives combine to bring out the worst in managers. The experts say that with the right training, micromanagement can be avoided.
But this doesn’t solve the riddle. The story falls short of explaining why micromanagement is so pervasive, even (especially!) at today’s top-performing companies.
So I want to take a different path. In this essay, I’ll show you that micromanagement isn’t just a nagging habit; it’s an inevitability. That’s the paradox: micromanagement is both bad management practice and a key component of the best management strategies. So in addition to explaining this paradox, I’ll offer some lessons from similar paradoxical problems. In the end, I want to demonstrate that, with the right approach to micromanagement, managers and their reports can thrive.