Micromanagement is a management style whereby managers check the work of their subordinates regularly and thoroughly. Most often we hear it is an undesirable way of management since having the boss constantly breathing down one's neck helps nobody. Jack Welch, however, strongly disagrees.
Welch, a long-serving CEO of General Electric (1981-2001), is an expert on leadership development and in 2010 he founded his own business school, the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University in Virginia. He regularly publishes his reflections on LinkedIn. Here he focuses on when managers should forget the prejudices associated with micromanagement and start to apply this management style.
When to be a micromanger
"Get very close to your people and their work when they need you – that is, when your help matters – and pull back when you’re extraneous," says Jack Welch. In his view, a manager's help matters in these cases:
- You are bringing a unique expertise or skills to a particular situation or you can expedite an issue using your authority.
- You have relevant experience nobody else in your team possesses and thus your involvement can show the best practices and help others avoid mistakes.
- You invest the priorities of the entire organisation into work on a certain important initiative.
- You have a long-term relationship with a particular customer or business partner, which can have a significant impact on the success of negotiations with them.
"Micromanaging only stinks when bosses do it because they have nothing better to do, or they’re constitutionally unable to trust people, employees included," Welch concludes.
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