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.

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.