Schlagwort-Archive: Micro Management

Agility does not tolerate a bonsai style

Bonsai is the art of influencing the growth of trees in such a way that the trees have a beautiful growth habit through artistic designing, but kept small in pots by regular cuts. The result is a large variety of original, apparently wild trees. In nature these trees would grow into the sky. A similar approach has evolved within enterprises. Bonsai style is the art of keeping employees small. This micro management affects the employee activities, like the scissors on the growth of trees. Agility that depends on pro-activity, initiative and flexibility of the people, cannot tolerate bonsai style.

What defines the bonsai style that undermines agility?

  • More criticism than praise
    Representatives of the bonsai style have the tendency to nip the however small commitment of employees in the bud by caviling incessantly. It makes no difference, whether the objections are justified or not. The whole is intensified by the absence of praise. In an agile world such leader could not take a stand, since nobody would follow them.
  • Devalue results with formalities
    The agile employees are driven people of their own aspiration. The attention is limited to the resolution. This leads to the fact that aspects that do not have much to do with the solution are faded out as of minor importance. Does the tie fit? Did you use the official forms? Is the Font correct? The result consists of eighty-percent problem solution. The bad evaluation of the formalities completely misses the goal and tramples all over the tender seedling of the employee commitment.
  • Consistently pulling the superior joker
    After many years of the development, the learning organization, the employee participation, and the teambuilding with their standards, evaluations and decisions from above, the power structures are still in place. Now those, who came to their limits, expect a debureaucratization and the utilization of the inherent employee energy of wanting to create something. However, if no one comes forward voluntarily, the volunteers are determined. If nobody delivers what the superiors expect, the employees get their result adapted by micro management. For safeguarding the business, the hierarchical structures are kept besides the agile ones.
  • Disparaged in the plenum
    A very effective approach, in order to keep the employees small, are offending comments in the public. Devaluing remarks on the personal work style, on small mistakes in the argumentation or on the editing, guarantee that the employees lose their face. The anticipatory commitment of the agile employee is then no longer probable.
  • Micro management
    The always not available, but obsessed with details 24/7 micro managers are actually their best agile employees. Their commitment always is at maximum. They worry about everything and they are decisive. Unfortunately they don’t have the time to consider, because they have incessantly tasks, which they obviously have to worry about. Since everything excites their attention, they cannot manage to get used to the work and contribute thereby nothing. Understandably, they cannot accomplish their actual function. Micro management is one of the largest hurdles on the way to the agility.
  • Missing covering
    The attitude to correct at any time each detail at discretion leads to the fact that the employees are quickly alone without covering, exposed to the problem in case of crisis. In order to be able to act agilely, they need however the trust from above that their actions always take place in the interest of the larger whole. Where a lot of things happen, there happen also many errors. Error tolerance is an approach, to provide good covering. In the context of agility a remaining leadership task is the boundless support and employee shielding, when they process the topics self-organized.
  • Rule one and two
    Apart from the micro management the largest agility killers are the rules of power. Rule 1: The boss is always right. Rule 2: If he is not right, then automatically rule 1 is valid. Thereby the budding initiative has no chance to prove itself on a long-term basis and to develop an effective solution.

Bottom line: As long as the old approaches for the company design remain unchanged, like the hierarchical structure, the chain of command, or the superior joker, the associated disadvantages also remain. The generous authorization of the employees with sufficient resources, powers and support is crucial for exhausting the advantages of agile approaches. Bonsai style prevents thereby the desired effects since an employee initiative nipped in the bud cannot flourish.

Micro Management 2.0

No one benefits from a leader, who is taking care of every detail of the business. This so-called Micro Management is common style of leadership. The Micro Manager (MM) can be recognized by the following aspects.

  • He cannot delegate.
  • He is always on the run, has no time and works around the clock.
  • He is interested in every detail.
  • He favors deciding everything by himself.
  • He corrects personally every error, no matter how small they are.
  • … (You surely find some additional attitudes).

This „over-steering” results for the employees in reluctance, work to rule, decreasing quality, regular delegation upward as well as the habit to react instead of acting independently. The whole is reinforced by the possibilities of the Internet and the extensive accessibility through smartphones, iPads and WiFi. This leads to Micro Management 2.0.

Mikromanager2 0

The Micro Manager 2.0 has the additional following properties.

  • Smartphones junkie
    Micro manager 2.0s have their smartphones always in standby. He/she reacts immediately to incoming calls or messages – in the office, a meeting, at lunch, in front of the television, in the restaurant, on the beach or wherever she/he currently is.
  • Smsing, whatsappen and Co.
    The means and ways that you can use today to communicate, are multimedia-based – text, sound and images as well as all combinations, synchronous or asynchronous. This reaches from short messages, to emails, to Skype. 0 are reading and smsing regularly one or two sentences, give direct orders or send a message that they come back later. Emails are essentially passed on with a short comment.
  • CC-supporters
    0s attach importance on being in all emails carbon copied (cc). Although they cannot cope with the resulting flood of information, they want to receive it because they could need the information later. Even so that this is mostly never the case. If the improbable case should happen, they will anyway simply request the latest version.
  • Calendar surfer
    In the Pre-Net age there was no choice for the micro managers than asking the secretary or the room neighbor, where Dick and Harry were. A 0 lives today in paradise, since he can access the calendars of the employees from everywhere. He does not limit himself to check where someone is. No. He asks, when and why not differently and what for at all.
  • Quality assurance
    It becomes particularly labor-intensive for MM2.0s, if they turn into the general quality control of the employees. Are the documents complete, error-free, perfectly bound, with enough copies,…? It starts, when they take over the spell checking. This, of course, can be intensified by checking the calculations of Excel sheets and by revealing all kind of minor flaws.
  • 10hours+Alpha-day
    Understandably the MM2.0s are not able to fulfill all tasks in the context of a normal working day. Even not the chosen expansion of work time to any extent greater than permitted is sufficient to accomplish. Therefore, after maximum 12 months, the MM2.0s are running on empty. They cannot keep up and start overseeing errors. Above all, they do not have time for their actual task – the leadership of their scope of responsibility. At the latest they are now overworked.
  • Thinking out loud
    In the absence of time, MM2.0s cannot provide a documented strategy. Although they have a vision and strategic goals, they are not able to express their ideas in a consistent way. Therefore they always think out loud and proclaim their feelings – either this or that way.
  • Penniless
    The largest deficit of the MM2.0s is the omission to look for sufficiently large budget. Thus, they are often penniless. They activate the official escalation way and the top management has to release of necessary means – or not.
  • Walking question mark
    The backdoor for executives, who do not have time to reflect, is the fully developed ability to respond to questions with a counter question at any time. Even if MM2.0s intervene everywhere, they do not think that they can solve everything – but they believe that they have to.

Bottom line: We suffer with Micro Management 2.0 faster and much more „over-steering”. The available ICT solutions provide more and more mobile and at all time ready systems. They offer unlimited uses to the Micro Managers 2.0. Nobody actually believes that leadership style does not deliver any benefit for the executives, the enterprise or the employees. Nevertheless companies allow that valuable energy is wasted with this approach.