If You're Micro-Managing, You're not Leading

A few days ago, the Harvard Business Review blog discussed how it is in the best interest for executives and project managers to micro-manage their teams. In that blog, the recent multi-billion dollar loss of JPMorgan and Chase under CEO Jamie Diamond was used as an example of why business leaders need to micro-manage everything that their subordinates do. The blog argued that if Diamond had scrutinized his employees’ work instead of delegating so much, the mistakes that occurred would have been caught and corrected.

Here at the LEADing Blog, we disagree with this belief and in developing this as a cultural tenet. Leaders should not have to micro-manage their teams at all. If you hire the right people to organize a corporate family centered around character and integrity, micro-managing is both unnecessary and a burden to the objectives of any corporate family. The losses of JPMorgan and Chase occurred not because their CEO failed to micro-manage his team, but because in part the people that the CEO was responsible for putting in place were a risk management issue waiting to happen based upon poor corporate cultural and personal character. Leaders should have the freedom to delegate and trust their teams to be able to complete their tasks according to their roles and responsibilities given to them based upon their competence and character.

The bottom line? Micro-managing should never be part of any high-performance team or company striving to have a strong corporate culture. Feel free to comment below and tell us your thoughts on micro-managing.