Micro management in project management

Abstract

This article will go into detail abound micromanagement in project management, and which negative effects it can have on project success. Everybody knows the term micromanagement and that it can seriously affect many factors at an workplace and thereby also in project management.

“79% have experienced micromanagement from their current or past managers.”

This meant that even if a team leader or manager thinks that they are not micromanaging there is still a high chance that it’s still happening. Therefore it’s important for all team leaders and members to know abound micromanagement and its negative impacts. These includes reduced team morale, decreased motivation, increased stress levels, and a less successful project result. To avoid micro-management, project managers should strike a balance between control and autonomy and whit this delegate responsibilities, thereby boosting team innovation. By considering the four perspectives of project management (Purpose, People, Complexity, and Uncertainty), this article will give project managers a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of micro-management and what tools can be used to avoid Micromanagement.

Definition of micro management

What is Micromanagement

Micromanagement is a management style where a manager or project manager exerts excessive control over their team, often getting involved in even the smallest of tasks. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, micro-management is "the act of controlling every part of a situation, including small details." . While some may see micromanagement to ensure high levels of productivity and quality, it can have a negative impact on employee morale and creativity. In regards to project management, especially employee morale will effect the creativity of a team that can have a impact on the solution space of a project.

Understanding micromanagement

Understanding the impact of micromanagement is crucial for effective project management. While micromanagement can have some short-term advantages in certain situations, such as training new team members, increasing productivity on certain tasks, and controlling high-risk issues, the long-term costs can be excessive and significantly affect a project. These long-term disadvantages could be low employee morale, high staff turnover, reduction of productivity, and dissatisfaction among stakeholders. In fact, micromanagement is among the top three reasons employees quit. Ultimately, micromanagement leads to long-term decreased growth potential in a department, hindering progress and success.

Symptoms of Micromanagement

By knowing the symptoms and impacts of micro-management, a project managers can try avoid its by knowing what to look out for. Symptoms of Micromanagement refer to the excessive supervision and control that a manager puts on their employees. The following points are some common signs of a micro-manager exhibits in their approach to managing employees and projects.

• Micromanagers oversee their workers too closely and spend an excessive amount of time supervising a particular project and telling people exactly what to do and how to do it.
• They are control freaks, often Type A personalities who are fundamentally insecure and afraid to trust the performance of those below them.
• Micromanagers typically go alone to the bosses office, as they do not wish subordinates to gain credit. They become irritated when others make decisions without consulting them. They explode when their bosses bypass them and go directly to one of their subordinates.
• Micromanagers are obsessed with meaningless details. They love numbers, lots of them. They confuse accuracy with precision.
• Micromanagers come in earlier than their employees and stay later. Employees at first feel guilty, but no matter how late they stay, the micro-boss stays later.
• Micromanagers dictate time, often creating deadlines for deadlines' sake. They demand overly frequent and unnecessary written status reports. They are so busy that delays happen frequently, while people wait for their input or signoff.
• Micromanagers stretch themselves too thin and take on too many projects. They move from one to another without completing any of the jobs. They are too busy to meet with subordinates and not available to provide guidance.
• Micromanagers abhor mistakes. Seldom praising, they consider their employees incompetent and soon lose the respect of coworkers and employees. While quick to blame, they seldom admit their own mistakes and shortcomings.

The impacts of micro management on project management

Micro-management can have an impact on many areas, which can be within all areas of project management, such as project success or efficiency, but it can also have an impact on the people involved. This section will go through some of the most impactful areas within project management.

Team morale and motivation

Micromanagement has negative impacts on employees. It reduces job satisfaction and makes them feel like they have no autonomy. Constant supervision and criticism create a stressful work environment that affects mental and physical health. This makes employees become less motivated and their creativity suffers. Being monitored damages there trust in the manager and creates a negative work environment.

"morale suffers as subordinate employees feel the administration does not trust their ability and competency as corrections officers, effectively driving a wedge between management and subordinates"

Project progress and efficienty

Micromanagement can have a significant impact on project progress, both positively and negatively. Micromanagement can ensure that tasks are completed on time and at high standard due to high amounts of checkups from a project manager. This can also prevent errors and misunderstandings, leading to a more streamlined project process. However, this may only work for a short period since the long-term effect of micromanagement from a project manager can give employees the feeling of low autonomy, thereby decreasing problem-solving capabilities. This can leads demotivation and a decrease in productivity. "Our research suggests that leaders can help their employees in hands-on and meaningful ways […]thus being a hands-on manager in such situations is critical" and "Micromanagement has been proven to be a stressful management style that achieves results only in the short term, and can be extremely taxing on both team members and management."

Project success

Project success means completing a project according to the agreed-upon terms, which include factors like time, budget, scope, and quality. While some factors like budget and quality can be closely managed under micromanagement and have positive impacts, excessive micromanagement can hinder the overall project's success. "Empowered employees are engaged employees. They have all the tools they need to learn and grow, connect with colleagues and others throughout the company, make their own decisions, be leaders, and contribute to the success" Put another way "Empowerment is a key driver of engagement."

The use of micro management under a crises

During a crisis, it is essential to ensure that critical tasks are completed on time and to a high standard. This could be due to a project being behind schedule or unexpected problems arising during the project. Micro-management can be a valuable tool during a crisis, as it allows project managers to efficiently and quickly complete a particular task. However, it is crucial to avoid excessive micro-management and allow team members to rest after a period of micromanagement. Micro-management should only be used as a short-term, high-intensity boost to a project and limited to crisis situations to avoid long term effects on the employs. "Micromanagement has been proven to be a stressful management style that achieves results only in the short term, and can be extremely taxing on both team members and management."

Strategies for avoiding micromanagement

By doing organisational changes micromanagement can be avoided. These doings can help top managers create a more productive and good work environment. Thus creating a workplace efficient and innovative and thereby solve projects even better.

Delegating responsibilities by promoting

By promoting certain people in your team, you can delegate some tasks. In this way, as a head manager, you don't have full control and say in sub-projects. But don't just delegate for the sake of delegating; it's important to choose the right people who can manage correctly and not just do their old job. "Because it is often more difficult to manage a job than to do it yourself, many people cannot make the transition from worker to supervisor, and if incapable of doing their new job, they micromanage those doing their old job."

Clear understanding of tasks

If no guidance is given or if the goals of a project or task are unclear, it is common for micromanagers to emerge. Since managers do not know the exact purpose of a task or project, they do not know when their task is done. And they may never feel like they have provided what top management asked for. Therefore, giving clear guidance and defining the purpose of a task can reduce micromanagement. "Often micromanagement is created when managers are unclear about their duties. With no guidance from above, they never know when they have done enough and have no idea how their performance is being judged."

Encourage managers to delegate

The best skill for a manager is to effectively delegate tasks. However, this can also be challenging for some. Therefore, helping managers at multiple levels of a project or a organisation learn the skill of giving away power is key to avoiding micromanagement and can help build even better trust within a team. When all participants know that tasks are handled well and correctly, it can enhance trust and improve teamwork. "To some, handing over control is horrifying, but they must soon learn that delegation is one of the most important productivity skills a manager can master. When properly exercised, delegation establishes responsibility and accountability, and builds mutual trust and reciprocity between superiors and subordinates."

Allow mistakes

Allowing innovation and being creative is highly important to avoid micromanagement. However, since being innovative and thinking outside the box can result in mistakes, it's important to accept that these mistakes happen. Getting a better result doesn't happen by doing the same thing all the time, but it happens by being creative and open to new solutions that have not been tested, even if there is a risk involved. "Create an organizational environment that is open to innovation and new ideas. When mistakes happen then you know employees have been empowered with decision making authority and are taking risks. "

Flatten the hierarchy of a organisation

Allowing more people to make autonomous decisions and making the hierarchy of your organization flatter can lead to more efficiency, increased agility, greater customer contact, reduced costs, and increased innovation, while avoiding micromanagement. This can also enhance employee skills, which can further improve the organization. "A flat management structure allows decisionmaking and operations to happen at approximately the same level, increasing contextual transparency and improving results. When higherlevel leadership is part of the daily goings on at the ground floor, they’re better equipped to evaluate employee performance, notice and understand operational faults and formulate solutions to company problems."

Self reflect

Even after attempting to reducing micromanagement in your organization, it's important to reflect on yourself and consider that if none of the tools or methods mentioned above helped, the main culprit of the problem might actually be you, the top manager.

You never know if the main problem is staring back at you in the mirror.

"We need to ask ourselves if we have met the enemy [the evil micromanager], and if so, is he us. " In this case, self-reflection and thinking of how to use the different strategies on oneself to reduce micromanagement is key to further success.

Analysis of the impact of micro-management on the four perspectives of project management (Purpose, People, Complexity, and Uncertainty)

Micromanagement can have impacts in many areas but it will have a impact on all parts of a project management. Based on the theory and until know found problems it noticeable that Micromanagement will have a impact all main parts of project management Purpose, People, Complexity, and Uncertainty. A run-through of the findings and the impact on these areas are now to be analysed.

Purpose

The purpose of a project is the main focus for why a project is executed. Even if a project is external and the purpose is set by an external stakeholder, an aggressive project manager can have an impact on the stakeholder, causing a change in the main purpose of the project or pushing it in a direction that the project manager believes is the right one from his perspective. This can have a huge impact on the end results of the product and the overall success of the project, since the main goal that the external stakeholder had in mind may not even be resolved. Tight boundaries for the project can also impact the solution space and have an impact on the end solution that should solve the main purpose of the project. This can also result in non-returning customers due to dissatisfaction.

People

The people are all the individuals involved in the project, from the people setting the purpose of the project, often external stakeholders, to the teams executing the project and working on it on a daily basis. This can be shorted into "Whom are we doing this for?" and "Who is doing it?". Since micro-management is a way of managing people, the impact on the people part of a project will therefore be substantial. The low autonomy that micro-management imposes on employees will affect employee morale, make them stressed, and decrease innovation. This will lead to a demotivated team and may even result in unforeseen team turnover. The longterm effect on a project execution team may even lead to impacts across multiple projects if the stress is carried over to new projects.

Complexity

The complexity of a project is part of actually solving the main purpose, this includes creating work breakdown structures, schedules, contracts, and dividing work. In the case of micro-management, if a manager doesn't delegate work tasks and manages even the smallest decisions in sub-tasks, the project might take a longer time to complete because of all the small decisions that have to be approved by the micro-manager. These micro-decisions will also decrease the solution space and innovation, which can lead to decreased project success.

Uncertainty

The uncertainty of a project is the navigation within problems with limited information. Making the right decisions can be challenging, but the learning opportunities that arise from these problems can have long-term benefits for team members. A micromanager can take steps to override opinion and decision for the project and force it in a certain direction, which may be beneficial in the short term. However, the long-term effect can remove the agility of the team and have an impact on innovation, as employees may not be challenged in a creative way.

Analysis of a balance between control and autonomy in project management and its impact on creativity and innovation

The stages of management styles are illustrated by the Double Diamond model. Diagram is created by the student to visualize the connection between micro-management and innovation.

In management, and therefore also in project management, it is necessary to strike the right balance between micro-management and no management. As mentioned in the sections above, micro-management can be beneficial in ensuring that project sub-tasks are completed on schedule and to quality standards. It allows project managers to closely monitor the progress of the project, identify issues early, and take action to keep the project on track. However, too much micro-management can have an impact on creativity and innovation, leading to disengagement and low morale among team members.

On the other hand, no management can lead to chaos and confusion, resulting in missed deadlines, poor quality, and ultimately project failure. Without any structured approach to managing a project, team members lack clear direction, leading to misunderstandings and miscommunications. Therefore, the balance between micro-management and no management in project management is critical.

At the same time, project managers should avoid micromanaging and give team members the autonomy to make decisions and solve problems. This approach fosters a sense of ownership and accountability among team members, leading to greater engagement, innovation, and ultimately project success.

This is also illustrated by the diagram using the double diamond model at different levels of management. It is noted that the more micro-management, the smaller the solution space becomes, and vice versa, less management opens up the solution space, but the amount of the solution may become difficult to grasp. The digram and this analyses was created by the student to visualize the connection between micro-management and innovation.

Final conclusion

Based on the theory and research that has been found it can be concluded that micromanagement in project management will have negative effects on project success. But project success is not everything, micromanagement will also demotivate team members, reduce innovation, create unnecessary delays, increase stress levels, and cause unassay problems that can affect both team members but also external stakeholders. Therefore, good project management is based on a work environment where team members are empowered and take ownership of their tasks there’s an effective delegation, clear communication, and setting realistic expectations for the teams members. This should help towards achieving the ultimate project success. Project managers should only focus on monitoring progress and providing support to the team members, rather than getting involved in every subtask and sub decisions. They should also establish a culture of trust, open communication, and accountability to ensure that team members feel valued and motivated to contribute their best and not being afraid of making mistakes. In conclusion, while micromanagement may seem like an effective way to ensure project success and high quality, it can often do more harm than good. Effective project management requires a balance between providing guidance and support to team members while allowing them autonomy and freedom to complete their tasks and achieve project success.

Annotated Bibliography

• My way or the highway: The micromanagement survival guide is a book about micromanagement and helps in identifying a micromanager. It also provides tools to evaluate whether a manager is a micromanager. The book is written by Harry E. Chambers, who has worked with clients such as IBM, Verizon, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

• Cambridge English Dictionary is the Dictionary of university press of the University of Cambridge and is a good way the get a definition of word.

• Micromanagement a costly management style by Sandra K. Collins and Kevin S Collins is a article about micromanagement in a radiology department and discusses the problems it can cause in terms of results. Sandra K. Collins and Kevin S. Collins have both written numerous articles on management in the healthcare sector.

• The Micromanagement Disease: Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Cure is an article that goes into the depths of identifying symptoms of micromanagement in an organization. It helps to figure out where the root problems come from and gives tools and actions to avoid and suppress micromanagement. The article is written by Richard D. White, Jr. who has a PhD in Public Administration and has written many articles in regard to public management.

• Micromanagement: The enemy of staff morale is article written at the American Correctional Association, that is a Non-Profit and Non-Gov association. The author of the article is John A. Shuford an correctional training coordinator in the department of prisons of North Carolina Department of Public Safety. He has written numerous feature articles for national publications and developed and delivered innovative staff development trainings for 25 years for many governmental agencies in the US.

• “How to Help Without Micromanaging” is a article, published by Harvard Business Review, discusses the appropriate times for small amounts of micromanagement. The magazine is a general management publication that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University.

• Micromanagement vs. Empowerment: A Leader's Role in People Management is an article written by the Project Management Institute (PMI). This article explores the effects of micromanagement on project teams and proposes a shift towards empowerment. The article also discusses the benefits of empowerment, such as increased innovation, creativity, and employee satisfaction. PMI has over 10,000 articles from subject matter experts on project management.

• http://wiki.doing-projects.org is a wiki from the Technical University of Denmark's ProjectLab, aimed at providing project management education and enabling access for everyone. The articles featured on the wiki are the sole results of students who have completed an advanced project management course at DTU.

• The Confident Boss Doesn’t Micromanage or Delegate Too Much is a articel from the Wall Street Journal. thats also cited in "The Micromanagement Disease: Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Cure", the article is written by Carol Hymowitz who went to Stanford's Center on Longevity is a former editor and writer at Bloomberg and a former editor and columnist a the Wall Street Journal.

• World in a Disrupted: Mercer Global Talent Trends Study 2017 is an article written by the American consulting firm Mercer that goes into detail about how different management styles impact certain areas of a business.

• Down With The Hierarchy: How Flat Management Fosters Employee Entrepreneurship is an article written by John Pierce, the Head of Business Development at the Forbes Human Resources Council. The invite-only platform helps entrepreneurs and founders connect with like-minded people and share knowledge across businesses.

• https://www.doing-projects.org/perspectives is a website that offers courses and research on project management at the Technical University of Denmark. The courses are designed for engineers and range from online courses for curious engineers to advanced Master courses and PhD projects. The website is run by a team of professors and researchers with interests in various aspects of project management.