I finally see why my old boss's micromanaging killed our productivity

I used to think my manager at a print shop in Denver was just being thorough when she checked every single order before it went out. I figured she was protecting us from mistakes. But then last Tuesday a rush job for a local restaurant got delayed by 2 hours because she wanted to approve the font size on their menu inserts. The customer called furious and I had to explain the holdup. That's when it hit me: her constant hovering cost us way more time than any error she caught. She left last month and our output actually went up by 15 percent. Has anyone else noticed their team does better once the boss backs off?

2 comments

2 Comments

abbyd3611d ago

So that 15 percent jump is pretty telling (and honestly, not shocking at all). Did she ever actually track the cost of those delays against the errors she supposedly prevented? I'm wondering if she had any real data to back up her style, or if it was just a gut feeling that she was right. Because it sounds like she was creating problems that didn't exist in the first place. Like, who's going to go to war over font size on a menu insert when the customer is just hungry for their printed menus?

christopher_craig11d ago

Haha yeah it's like when you go to a burger joint and the cashier has to wait for a manager to approve every little discount code while the line stretches to the door. Always makes me wonder how many things we slow down just because someone's afraid of losing control.