My Way or the Highway
The Micromanagement Survival Guide
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
By the author of the bestselling Bad Attitude Survival Guide (more than 40,000 copies sold), named one of the top business books of 1998 by Executive Book Summaries
Everyone thinks they know what micromanagement is, but this book presents a specific, detailed definition illustrated with concrete examples
Offers successful strategies for overcoming your own micromanaging behavior and for responding when you are being micromanaged
Micromanagement is one of the most widely condemned managerial sins, and one of the most common employee complaints. It results in significant direct, indirect, and hidden costs to organizations, contributing to low morale, high turnover, inefficiency, instability, and lack of continuity. And being perceived as a micromanager can have a significant negative impact on your career. But what, precisely, is micromanagement? More importantly, what can be done about it?
In My Way or the Highway, Harry Chambers proves that micromanagement can be objectively identified and successfully resisted, both by those who (often unknowingly) inflict it and by those who are its victims.
In an informal, entertaining style Chambers describes five specific defining traits of micromanagers: placing their own self interest above everything else; controlling and manipulating time; attempting to determine exactly how everything must be done; requiring elaborate approval processes; and establishing dysfunctional monitoring and reporting requirements. He even provides a Micromanagement Potential Indicator test so you can see whether (and to what extent) you might be a micromanager. He then devotes a chapter to each trait, providing real-world examples of the trait in action and an analysis of the damage it does.
But this is not just a book of diagnosis-Chambers provides treatment as well. He devotes several chapters how to respond if you are the micromanagee (a victim of micromanagement), how to eliminate your own micromanaging behaviors, and what to do if you have to manage a micromanager.
Avoiding micromanagement should be a major goal of every manager, would-be manager, team member, or collaborative peer. My Way or the Highway offers detailed, actionable, field-tested strategies that will eliminate the damage that overcontrolling behavior causes and increase creativity, risk-taking, productivity, and initiative in any organization.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this perceptive and practical guide, Chambers, the author of The Bad Attitude Survival Guide and president of Trinity Solutions, an Atlanta-based training and consulting company, prescribes ways to cope with bosses of the most irritating order--the micromanagers. Almost anyone who has collected a paycheck will recognize the destructive managerial behaviors that Chambers describes with piercing acuity in this volume--behaviors such as not listening to others, exercising power indiscriminately, feeding on the failure of subordinates, delegating blame, personalizing disagreements, imposing arbitrary deadlines, mismanaging meetings and delegating responsibility while keeping a vise grip on authority. "For most micromanagers," Chambers writes, "the term empowerment means the sharing of responsibility with others, but not the sharing of authority. They exercise control by requiring that others receive their approval for decisions, changes, and courses of action.... This is a major contributor to the high stress levels in today's work environment." Not only does Chambers offer hard-nosed advice for employees bashing pates with micromanagers, but he gives guidance to those who must supervise them. Though his advice basically amounts to talking to your micromanager, involving him or her in "Determining How the Behavior Will Be Changed" and monitoring those changes, this book can be a helpful resource for readers who are frazzled by a hands-on-everything boss and those who need to purge their own management styles of unproductive attitudes.
