{"id":20974,"date":"2017-03-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global2020prd.wpengine.com\/insights\/in-praise-of-lazy-managers-avoiding-the-control-cascade\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T12:19:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T12:19:03","slug":"in-praise-of-lazy-managers-avoiding-the-control-cascade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/in-praise-of-lazy-managers-avoiding-the-control-cascade\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoid the risks of micromanagement? Be more lazy."},"content":{"rendered":"

From time to time we see extensive press coverage of extremely detailed “hero mangers” who micromanage their organizations. They become darlings of the markets and the press for their cost control – until the risks of micromanagement become evident and it all falls apart. For most leaders, it is a constant challenge finding the right balance of control and empowerment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One chief executive of a very large organization we worked with held a 9.30 am meeting, every morning with his direct reports, and asked them very detailed information about what had happened in a particular branch on a particular day. The environment was quite hostile, and quite antagonistic:\u00a0 the morning meetings became known as the\u00a0 \u201cMorning Beatings<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Creating a control cascade<\/h2>\n

What behaviours did this micro-management drive outside the meetings?\u00a0 It was very clear that because that behaviour was driven from the top, it created what I call a control cascade<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If you were the very senior person invited to that meeting, you needed to know the details of everything that went on in your organization in case you were asked a question. Because of that, the people who worked for you needed to know everything that was going on below them in order to feed your information need, because you were feeding the need of your boss – and everyone had to report that information upwards every week so their ultimate bosses were prepared for their weekly beatings.<\/p>\n

This organization had over 100,000 employees and operated worldwide. Can you imagine the massive reverse cascade of work informing someone right at the top of the organization, about information that, frankly, they don\u2019t need to have. I estimated it was over 10,000 hours per week. This is one of the risks of micromanagement.<\/p>\n

This is one of the clearest indications of the scale of waste that can be caused by micro management, not t mention the impact on engagement and empowerment.<\/p>\n

It also turned out that the micro management was focusing on the wrong topics, because it wasn\u2019t the sales in a particular branch in the UK that caused the subsequent problems in this organization. Perhaps if leaders had more time to focus on the important strategy issues, rather than last weeks sales figures, it could have been avoided.<\/p>\n

In many organizations and admiring press pieces, these very smart and hardworking senior executives are lauded and rewarded (often by the same journalists who are now criticising them for the same behaviours). My view is that this kind of manager is dangerous and can easily drive a culture of micromanagement that feeds their own inappropriate control tendencies and undermines autonomy in the whole organization.<\/p>\n

Perhaps what we need is lazier senior managers \u2013 a lazy manager is generally a good delegator. Find out more about how to balance control and empowerment<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps what we need is lazier senior managers \u2013 a lazy manager is generally a good delegator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":23886,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-20974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","type-blog","training-agile-and-digital","training-matrix-management","training-virtual-teams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAvoid the risks of micromanagement? 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