In Defense of Micromanagement

In 2009, I was leading a company-wide Knowledge Management (KM) program for a global, civil engineering and consulting firm. During that time, I became increasingly aware of how dependent successful KM is on basic, long-standing business management best practices. Things like good performance metrics, experienced managers and a culture which supports process discipline are essential underpinnings for any successful KM initiative or system. In good times, sexy ideas like innovation management and knowledge management seem like good foundations for competitive advantage. But when conditions start to go sour, you begin to see where good times have led to complacency, where corners were cut and where best practices were ignored. And in the cold light of difficult business conditions, it becomes clear that without basic best practices being embraced, investment in what we've come to know as knowledge management is actually a dramatic waste of energy. 

As these thoughts began to crystalize for me, I wrote an article called Ignorance Management which was published in Business Information Review Journal (BIR). The article encourages companies to swtich from thinking about knowledge management to investing in uncovering pockets of ignorance amongst their management team. Response to the article was mixed. Some liked it, some thought it was pessimistic. 

But with permission from BIR, I've re-published the article here. Because as uncomfortable as the article makes some feel, nowhere is the reality check that it encourages more critical than in managment of IT functions today. Technology changes so fast and in so many different directions that its very difficult to have an accurate understanding of what a piece of software does or doesn't do, or how a device acheives what the sales person promises it will. Accordingly a company hires technologists to handle these things, from our e-mail systems to our security systems. But managing teams of technologists is incredibly tricky as you can't simply take their word for it that everything is OK. You've got to develop a management team that is educated enough to understand what "good" looks like and what risk looks like at a fairly granular level. That management layer has got to delve into what the technologists are doing enough to be able to draw straight lines between their daily activities and the value that the technology they oversee should be bringing to your company's bottom line. 

I know micromanagement has gotten a bad rap for good reasons. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Insisting you should do or re-do your employee's work or even insist that it be done exactly the way you want it done is going too far and will ultimately cause serious problems in your team, granted. But taking your hands off the wheel and letting go of insisting that you understand what your employees do or of evaluating their results through reviews and audits in the name of trusting them is 180 degrees from wrong.