First off, work is going well. Job is laid back, money is good, my boss is awesome as are most of my coworkers.
Having said that, I find micromanagers to be annoying and have had to deal with them from time to time (like my former boss). One of my limitations is that I can work in two modes. Either let me figure it out, or tell me what you want me to do. What I have never been successful at is figuring out how to think of something on my own that is the way that someone else would want me to do it.
Right now I'm working with a 25-ish year old project manager (I'm 44). The project we are working on is something that we did on our last system. My reputation in the company is literally built on the fact that I was put on the old project 7 years ago and turned something that was chaotic crap into something that worked. It was so successful that they decided to do it for the new instruments, but instead of just letting me do it, they turned it into a big, convoluted, expensive project so that lots of execs could stamp their names on it.
......but I digress. Anyway, I have one analyst who reports to me and has a good 30 years of experience. We've now added a recent college grad who will be working with the analyst and doing some of the work. The project manager thinks that we need to have a system to keep track of what has been worked on and what each of them is working on so that they don't duplicate their efforts. He said that we could do whatever we wanted and that he didn't care but thought that I should come up with the system. I gave him my answer, which I guess he thought was lame because it didn't involve enough micromanaging on my part, so then he told me what he wanted me to tell them what to do (the four of us are in a room together for this meeting).
I think its important to note that the tasks are pretty simple, both are college grads, one has 30 years of professional experience, and their cubes are literally next to each other. I thought, "you're both adults and I don't need to tell you how not to duplicate your work" should have been sufficient.
Anyway, of the 20-30 managers I've had, this is the 3rd micromanager I've had to deal with. The last one was really bad. He thought that managing was contradicting everything his employees said and telling them to do it differently. He once changed something that he thought was mine because he forgot that he had already changed it. So we ultimately went back to what I was originally doing. The first micromanager was a math curriculum supervisor who wanted to write the lesson plans for every single math teacher in the school district and force us to follow them, regardless of the unique challenges that we faced.
Anyway, what causes people to micromanage?
-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
Having said that, I find micromanagers to be annoying and have had to deal with them from time to time (like my former boss). One of my limitations is that I can work in two modes. Either let me figure it out, or tell me what you want me to do. What I have never been successful at is figuring out how to think of something on my own that is the way that someone else would want me to do it.
Right now I'm working with a 25-ish year old project manager (I'm 44). The project we are working on is something that we did on our last system. My reputation in the company is literally built on the fact that I was put on the old project 7 years ago and turned something that was chaotic crap into something that worked. It was so successful that they decided to do it for the new instruments, but instead of just letting me do it, they turned it into a big, convoluted, expensive project so that lots of execs could stamp their names on it.
......but I digress. Anyway, I have one analyst who reports to me and has a good 30 years of experience. We've now added a recent college grad who will be working with the analyst and doing some of the work. The project manager thinks that we need to have a system to keep track of what has been worked on and what each of them is working on so that they don't duplicate their efforts. He said that we could do whatever we wanted and that he didn't care but thought that I should come up with the system. I gave him my answer, which I guess he thought was lame because it didn't involve enough micromanaging on my part, so then he told me what he wanted me to tell them what to do (the four of us are in a room together for this meeting).
I think its important to note that the tasks are pretty simple, both are college grads, one has 30 years of professional experience, and their cubes are literally next to each other. I thought, "you're both adults and I don't need to tell you how not to duplicate your work" should have been sufficient.
Anyway, of the 20-30 managers I've had, this is the 3rd micromanager I've had to deal with. The last one was really bad. He thought that managing was contradicting everything his employees said and telling them to do it differently. He once changed something that he thought was mine because he forgot that he had already changed it. So we ultimately went back to what I was originally doing. The first micromanager was a math curriculum supervisor who wanted to write the lesson plans for every single math teacher in the school district and force us to follow them, regardless of the unique challenges that we faced.
Anyway, what causes people to micromanage?
-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485