Micromanagement is not always a dirty word.

“Micromanagement.” Just the hint of that accusation can induce you to become defensive.

But what if I told you that there can be a valid time and place for micromanagement, as long as you handle it well.

Consider these scenarios:

👉 Becoming a manager of managers over teams with skills you don’t have
👉 Moving to a new organization or new product line
👉 Overseeing a high-risk, high-stakes project

There are three things these scenarios have in common:

1️⃣ You know there are many things you don’t know.
2️⃣ You don’t know how much you don’t know.
3️⃣ You don’t know the danger of not knowing those things, but you’re pretty sure that the risk is pretty high for at least some of them.

In scenarios like that, a responsible manager may very well ask the team to provide much more detail with much greater frequency than you might be comfortable sustaining over a long period of time.

While it’s possible for the same person to both micromanage and undermanage in different areas at the same time, most managers tend to undermanage more than they micromanage. When the stakes are high, it can be healthy to tip the scales toward more detailed involvement.

For a while.

Eventually, you’ll learn what things need your continued attention and which ones don’t. You can scale back then.

But until then, prepare your team for stronger management oversight. Make sure they understand the consequences of failure. Let them know that you will be probing things at a lot more detail than you normally would, and probably more detail than they’re usually comfortable with.

And just as importantly, let your team know how you will know you can stop. This could be the completion of a delivery milestone, the achievement of a metric threshold, or simply a date on the calendar.

When you honor that commitment to relinquish your micromanagement as you agreed, you’ll build trust to support your deeper involvement in future high-stakes oversight.

So don’t let the fear of a “micromanagement” accusation tempt you to undermanage. Be ready to increase — and then decrease — your involvement to fit the scenario.