The macro harm of micromanagement
Stress tolerant, highly organised and overall mentally healthy people are much better off in times of crisis like the current pandemic. The companies they work for benefit greatly as well. However, in many cases the people who compromise the mental health of their employees (and therefore, the crisis resilience of their companies) are business leaders themselves.
‘Don’t bother people with your advice, take long lunch breaks and go home at four’ — this is how Simon Kuper, one of the most interesting columnists at the Financial Times, paints a picture of an ideal boss. Sounds unconventional, to say the least, even in peaceful times, let alone in a global crisis. Most of us believe that the best bosses are the most engaged ones. In our consultancy, we have seen CEOs of big financial institutions reading every word their marketing departments have produced. Surprisingly, this practice wasn’t regarded as the striking inefficiency that it was, but instead was interpreted as a trait of highly responsible leadership. In the short term, this management style leads to only minor inconveniences in business processes, yet in the long run, it exacts a huge toll on a company’s resilience and agility, which the current crisis has finally exposed.
What is the main difference between companies that withstand crises and ones that don’t? It’s not size or industry — survivors and victims are to be found in every sector, on every scale. What differentiates them is their corporate culture and management style.
Survivors are characterised by high levels of employee autonomy, as well as their employee’s good mental health. And it is exactly these two things that are most effectively destroyed by super-engaged bosses.
Let’s begin with the mental health issues. The current crisis, with its requirements for isolation combined with a total inability to predict its future developments, has put mental health in greater focus than ever before. Bad work-life balance with long and irregular working hours, loneliness, disrupted sleep, increase in alcohol consumption and unhealthy diets — these are the unintended consequences of current work-from-home arrangements for many of us, as the recent study by the Institute for Employment Studies demonstrates. Moreover, negative psychological consequences of isolation may linger on, even years after actual restrictions are lifted. In fact, a study published in The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, has shown that the effects of quarantine are quite similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, suffered by soldiers and first responders.
Desperate times require desperate measures. The demand for workplace psychologists has surged. No surprise that the first to react to the new conditions are the companies that have previously been most interested in the wellbeing of their employees. Yet the solutions are surprising indeed, ranging from zoom cooking classes to virtual prayer sessions to bedtime stories for children (all from the recent repertoire of Goldman Sachs).
For most businesses, however, the mental health of their employees was never a top priority. A nice-to-have, rather than a must-have. Also, when thinking about wellbeing, bosses and HR departments mostly had a collective rather than an individual focus, offering informal getaways, collective meditation sessions and other cooperation facilitating measures. Yet it turns out, what really matters in times of crisis is individual resilience. So much that a company’s survival depends on it.
Sporadic wellbeing activities are much better than none at all, yet they cannot ensure the strong mental health of each and every employee. A much greater role in this is played by company culture.
Do your employees feel free to make their own decisions? Can they take responsibility for their actions? This is the connection between wellbeing and autonomy.
If the everyday culture at a company favours fitting in, rather than standing out, if the boss has the last say even in tiny matters, if employees know their decisions can be randomly disputed, their autonomy gets fundamentally undermined. When the usual rules and instructions disappear or are of no use under new conditions, people are left with no tools for independent action. If the boss does not represent a gold standard of resilience themselves, expect big trouble. This was already obvious within the first weeks of the crisis — while some businesses were quick to react to new kinds of demand, others “froze” and moved slowly and clumsily.
Sometimes the psychological traits of the boss are themselves an obstacle to employee autonomy. Business leaders have their own insecurities and may feel threatened by independent managers. Yet in other cases, lack of autonomy is related to lack of ambition. If all you want your business to become is “good enough”, then all you ask of your employees is to follow instructions and not create mess. In such organisations, independent and creative thinkers only cause disruption and conflict. On the other hand, the most autonomous employees are to be found in companies with almost audacious ambitions. This applies equally to a big international corporation as to a small café aspiring to become the most-loved in town. When the goal is set high, instructions and traditions (‘we have always done it this way’) are of no help. And it turns out, in times of radical uncertainty, skills learned by doing things independently are critical — they decide who survives and who does not.
Congratulations, if the culture of your company has been autonomy-based since the beginning. What if that’s not the case? Can you change it now? Yes and no. Events of the magnitude of this crisis do indeed open a window of opportunity for reforms that were unthinkable before. This is clearly demonstrated by recent political developments — governments around the world are embarking on programmes of economic stimulus that the same politicians and experts would have deemed absolutely impossible just a short time ago. However, not settling back to things as they were before is a great challenge — normalcy becomes very attractive in times of turbulence. Effects of shock therapy don’t last unless they are reinforced by a broader change in both thinking and doing. And it is not only bosses who need to change. It takes two to tango, as they say.
