According to Wikipedia, micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes or controls the work of subordinates or employees. It has a negative connotation because of excessive control or attention to details of the manager. Still according to Wiki, excessive obsession with the most minute details causes a direct management failure in the ability to focus on major details.
For me, micromanaging is more of a trust issue. If you cannot trust your employee to do his job well then your tendency is watch him every step of the way, directing him what to do, and getting more and more frustrated of the cycle, because the more you guide him, the more he depends on you. You might not realize it yet but you may have already built a culture of habit of co-dependency between the two of you.
We know that low trust environments snowball to some larger problems. When you don't trust your employee, he then learns not to trust himself, then eventually he learns not to trust others as well, to the point where he trusts close to no one. This progressing spiral in turn cultivates ineffectiveness, poor performance and unreliability along the sides, among others.
http://www.inc.com/tom-searcy/4-ways-to-stop-being-a-micromanager.html
Friday, March 22, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Teams Vs Work Groups
In one way or another we have been in groups or teams working together for a project. The project may be for a brief period of time or it may run for months. During these times we are required to interact with one or more people to make it a success.
How do we know when we belong to a team or just a work group? As defined by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith in their article The Discipline of Teams in the Best of HBR 1993, a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. The key is the mentioned four elements - common commitment and purpose, performance goals, complementary skills, and mutual accountability. And to be a team, these four elements must all be present at the same time.
A work group may have a strong, clearly focused leader but a team has shared leadership roles. A work group fosters individual accountability while the other, an individual and mutual accountability. A team also discusses and decides, but unlike a work group, it doesn't only delegate, it does real work together.
How do we know when we belong to a team or just a work group? As defined by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith in their article The Discipline of Teams in the Best of HBR 1993, a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. The key is the mentioned four elements - common commitment and purpose, performance goals, complementary skills, and mutual accountability. And to be a team, these four elements must all be present at the same time.
A work group may have a strong, clearly focused leader but a team has shared leadership roles. A work group fosters individual accountability while the other, an individual and mutual accountability. A team also discusses and decides, but unlike a work group, it doesn't only delegate, it does real work together.
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