New manager wants to be involved in everything, team swamps him with requests: 'We kept the manager so busy with emails we're all doing nothing'

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Oct 7, 2024 7:00 AM EDT

Obsessive control over situations and circumstances does net results—and that's part of the problem. This early, immediate, and measurable success creates the validation necessary for managers—and really anyone in a position of authority—causing them to fall further and further into the pitfall that is micromanagement.  Other than the fact that it ruins morale and generally makes everyone you're working with miserable, micromanagement presents some problems: namely, you'll reach a point, a limit, where you can't possibly handle every request. Everything needing to pass across your desk will make you a bottleneck within the organization, stalling projects as you struggle to handle everything.

Education is important, but it isn't everything, and it's important to be practical and work with the people around you rather than preaching what you know (or think you know) to them.

This MBA-wielding new manager stormed onto the scene touting lessons about leadership or efficiency despite not knowing much about the application of either. Micromanaging was more of his wheelhouse, and he wanted to be involved in everything, even the most "trivial" matters. This led to his downfall, as the team began inundating him with endless requests and pointless emails, swamping the efficiency and productivity of the entire team.

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    Manager wants to micromanage everyone and everything - sounds good to us! M MBA, Master in Business Administration. More often than not, those who possess such a degree are neither masters of anything, nor business savvy. Unfortunately, MBAs often possess enough fluency of buzz words, jargons, and acronyms that they fool many HR departments into believing they bring
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    tremendous value. Their perceived value is often far greater than their actual value. The company I work at was recently acquired. It was a profitable company with a great culture. This all changed when the new owners decided our company was absolute , and needed to be fixed with "structure, hierarchy, and order". A new CEO came on board, fired all the old managers, and hired someone with an MBA to manage the department I work at. The CEO is keen to "turn things around", and to ensure we obey, s
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    This new manager, Bob, is a company-man who came from the acquiring firm. Instead of understanding the who, what, when, where, why, and how of every person and processes, he began his reign of terror by ruling by fear, whether it's accusing us of inefficiencies and laziness (e.g. why aren't you staying later like everyone else), nitpicking our work, to micromanaging things he has zero understanding of.
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    He loves preaching about MBA management techniques, leadership, standardization, metrics. in matrixes, Al automation, and anything that sounds good on paper. Note the term "preach" because that's all he does. He does not execute or lead, he just talks and "manages", but fails to understand.
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    Because of who Bob is, we all have become yes-man to his every will. We keep our head down, nod and smile, His fluent command of endless buzz-phrases, acronyms, has us so awed, we and mostly just sit and stare in silence. The highlight of every meeting is that he would talk to the very last second of the allotted time. But whenever a meeting somehow ends earlier than the allotted time, he would tell us "I'm giving you some time back". This implies that he owns our time when we're here.
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    Because Bob wants to be the center of attention, he's asked us to involve him with everything. A hands-off manager who just loves taking credit for our work and micromanaging us, wants us to involve him in EVERYTHING? You bet we will comply.
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    From that day onward, everyone in our department asks Bob, in writing, for his thoughts on just about anything, from simple approvals to his input on complex design of processes he has no understanding of. Even for items that does not require his action, we CC him in order to keep him in the loop. Every correspondence, even with vendors about basic stuff like updating credit application details, will involve Bob.
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    Because Bob loves meetings so much, we invite him to talk at length in meetings about trivial matters that absolutely have no real-world consequences. We talk about everything he wants to get involved in. We know how much he loves listening to his own voice.
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    There is something so magical about being able to manipulate a manager into inundating ourselves with so much pointless papertrail, processes, and meetings. Not only does it ensure the manager is aligned in our day-to-day (so he would be responsible if something goes wrong), it makes the manager feel good about doing something, and it makes us feel good about doing nothing much at all.
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    TLDR: we complied with our managers' obsessive need to be in control, we created meaningless work for all of us, we kept the manager so busy with emails we're all doing nothing much, and as a result, everyone is busy and become unfireable...
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    speculatrix 4h ago • • I once had a manager who didn't understand what we did, so he decided that he could manage our time and interfere with our jobs. I found the best thing to do was to keep him busy, by getting him mired in bureaucratic work, like negotiating maintenance contracts, and I told him it was important work that only someone of his rank and status could do, and that made him feel important.
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    Commercial-Place6... 4h ago • And if you're communicating literally everything to Bob, he can't later deny his involvement or knowledge in any situation that goes awry.
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    cssol 4h ago. Aside from the fact that it must be a colossal time waste for you guys, this is a very satisfying malicious compliance without him even noticing. -
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    AcmeCartoonVillian • 3h ago Been on the opposite end of this. Brought into a call center as a training department leader to replace an empty suit that was shitcanned for incompetence. whole program was hemorrhaging people. both staff and new hires.
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    Came in first day and had a 20 minute meeting where I said to my trainers "I'm here to observe processes and compliance to the client and put out immediate fires. I was brought in because I have a decade of experience wit hone of your competitors and the last person here messed up so bad they went external. That's
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    not automatically a reflection on you, and Im more than willing to believe you were doing everything you could behind the scenes to keep the ship afloat. But I need to know how bad the problems are before I can start fixing them. Together we can keep the ship afloat, and with my experience and your cooperation we can get it pointed in the right
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    direction, To that effect I need you to keep me appraised of what's going on. I want you to know that I want a status report of any major decision you make, any support you need, and any critical decisions needing to be made.
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    I want a summary sentence at the beginning of the email with the above information, and the rest of the email is your place for CYA and details. YOU will never get in trouble for giving me too much information as long as you follow those rules and always lead with the critical details, asks, and needs... and elaborate in the body of the email."
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    It took about a week to get everything straightened out enough that we weren't grossly out of client compliance, and I had one guy try the malicious compliance route of 4-page emails, but luckily after about a month they realized I wasn't trying to them over and was actually there to help. Plus those 4 pagers were funny to
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    read and imagine the guy hate- the keyboard with minutia as his way of working through the emotional rollercoaster of a new boss. Took about 2 months till they fully trusted me, and by 6 months I had people telling me that I was one of the better bosses in the site (not hard)
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    Too bad the site lead up by the numbers promoted nepotism and we were dissolved anyway and rolled to the Work-from-home department when the site lease came up a year later. My position (and half the site. staff's) was redundant and I moved to a role that had me leave for my current position with yet another competitor.
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    hacktheself • 3h ago I am a fan of the phrase "Master of Business Atrocities."
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    Yib... 3h ago Edited 3h ago • I had a very similar situation at a former place of employment. Prior to our twice weekly one of us would have this week's 'buzz-word bingo" card. the boxes were filled with the boss' latest favorite words/phrases. Each week the office administrator would puy it together. Some of these
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    were: Alignment, Messaging, Out of the Box, Synergy, Touch Base, etc. If bingo was achieved, we would after work, meet up at a bar and have a good laugh. and drink at his expense.
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    CleverNickName-69. 3h ago • I love that everyone is united on making sure Bob is clearly responsible for the collapse of productivity. That is probably the best thing they can do. I hate that the best they can hope for is that the business unit is worth saving and the top management replaces Bob with someone who isn't as bad. Getting a good manager is probably too much to hope for after everyone who actually knew the business was sent away.
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    . ppmd • 3h ago Remember that documentation takes time and you need to wait for a response. This time is company time, and if there is a decrease in productivity, that's due to his new innovative policies.
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