The Management Paradox
Everything simple is wrong. Everything complex is unusable.
The tech industry has a lot of unwritten rules. One of the most rigid is "don't micromanage." It's repeated so often that it's become almost religious doctrine. And like most religious doctrines, it contains a seed of truth wrapped in layers of dangerous oversimplification.
I've been thinking about this recently because I've noticed something interesting: the best people I know regularly violate this rule. Not because they're bad managers, but because they understand something subtle that most people miss.
The key insight isn't that micromanagement is bad. It's that management style should be a function of two variables: competence and motivation. This seems obvious once you think about it, but it's surprising how rarely people do.
Let's start with first principles.
What's the actual goal of management? It's to ensure valuable work gets done. Everything else - employee happiness, team culture, process optimization - these are all inputs to that function. Important inputs, certainly, but not the fundamental purpose.
The interesting thing about competence and motivation is that they create a matrix. Think of competence as having four levels:
1. Unknown (We don't know what they can do)
2. Junior (Learning the basics)
3. Professional (Can execute independently)
4. Expert (Deeply understands the domain)
And motivation as having four levels too:
1. Actively sabotaging
2. Uninterested
3. Fine/Acceptable
4. Fully Driven
This creates sixteen possible states. But here's where it gets interesting: these states aren't fixed properties of people. They're properties of people in specific contexts.
The same person who's an Expert/Fully Driven (4/4) on Project A might be a Junior/Fully Driven (2/4) on Project B. This is why treating management style as a personal characteristic rather than a contextual response is fundamentally flawed.
What separates really seniour people isn't their position in this matrix - it's the speed at which they can reach 4/4 in new contexts. A junior engineer might take six months to become competent in a new domain. A senior engineer might do it in two weeks.
The best managers understand this instinctively. When they have someone who's Expert/Fully Driven, they get out of the way. Giving a motivation speech to someone in this state would be like explaining addition to a mathematician.
But - and this is crucial - what if you have someone who's Expert but Actively Sabotaging? The conventional wisdom about "never micromanage" suddenly looks naive. In this case, tight control isn't just appropriate - it's necessary.
This reveals something about management: it's not about finding one perfect style and sticking to it. It's about developing the ability to move fluidly between different styles based on the situation.
Great managers are like skilled martial artists - they can switch stances instantly based on what the situation requires. Bad managers are like someone who only knows one move.
The pushback against micromanagement usually comes from experts who are highly motivated. They've experienced the frustration of unnecessary oversight, and they're not wrong - in their situation, micromanagement is indeed harmful. But they're generalizing from their specific case to a universal principle, and that's where the logic breaks down.
If you're feeling micromanaged, instead of immediately assuming your manager is doing something wrong, ask yourself two questions:
Have you demonstrated both the competence and motivation to have more autonomy?
Has something changed recently in either your performance or motivation that might have triggered this shift?
Often, what feels like unnecessary micromanagement is actually a rational response to changing circumstances. The best way to address it isn't to complain about the management style, but to have an honest conversation about the factors driving it.
This isn't to defend bad managers who micromanage out of insecurity or inability to delegate. They exist, and they're a problem. But the solution isn't to denounce micromanagement as universally bad - it's to understand when different management styles are appropriate and to build the skill to switch between them effectively.
The next time someone says "don't micromanage," ask them: "in what context?" Because like most management advice, the real answer isn't never or always - it's "it depends."
And that "it depends" is where all the interesting work happens.