{"id":512,"date":"2020-05-14T14:54:05","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T14:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klasternit.com\/?p=512"},"modified":"2020-05-14T14:54:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T14:54:05","slug":"mikro-pratioci","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/mikro-pratioci\/","title":{"rendered":"Micro-followers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the knowledgebase worker economy continues to transition to more agile, more remote, more dynamic and more empowered, your classic\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2014\/11\/signs-that-youre-a-micromanager\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">micromanager<\/a>\u00a0is a dying breed, for good reason. Micromanagement gets a bad reputation because of the pernicious effect is has on retarding the growth and productivity of teams and if left unchecked, how it can calcify entire organizations.<\/p>\n<p>But a phenomenon that I see all the time but is never mentioned, is the prevalence of team members who refuse to think, lead, share, strive, own and want to have their hands held when doing even the most trivial task. I call them microfollowers.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, so they need training? But even when you answer their questions, walk them through tasks up to thoroughly training them on certain skills they tend to not internalize this knowledge and instead just constantly ask questions. Other traits of microfollowers include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When they do tasks they are often of such poor quality that they require a dedicated QA just to get the results accepted to any minimum standard.<\/li>\n<li>They tend to not RTFM, search for answers or otherwise show any initiative in figuring things out<\/li>\n<li>They won\u2019t follow instructions, when they are given<\/li>\n<li>They constantly ask questions, but often won\u2019t listen to or at least remember the answers<\/li>\n<li>They never take initiative in general<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These people have a philosophy that a superior is actually a line supervisor that will essentially manage them as if they were a machine, inputting instructions for every task, no matter how small or trivial. They also believe they are responsible only for the effort and not the results, so that no matter the output from their labor, the quality of it isn\u2019t their responsibility. These ideas can be deeply ingrained and difficult to change, especially as people get older.<\/p>\n<h3>How to spot a microfollower<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>They ask an inordinate amount of questions, often without applying basic thought or logic. Many of the questions are non-sensical<\/li>\n<li>They tend to repeat the same questions that they had asked previously, even a day or two before<\/li>\n<li>They don\u2019t tend to retain information. They forget answers to questions, responses to emails, instructions that they supposedly read<\/li>\n<li>They never read instructions, procedures, guidelines on their own<\/li>\n<li>They tend to make the same mistakes over and over again<\/li>\n<li>They never take responsibility for their actions<\/li>\n<li>If a mistake is made they always\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scrumbum.com\/fucking-up-vs-fucking-down\/\">\u201cFuck down\u201d vs \u201cFuck up\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n<li>They constantly complain that nobody has trained them and\/or their training is inadequate, yet when trained, even formally, they tend to retain very little of the knowledge<\/li>\n<li>They\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scrumbum.com\/iron-jaws-and-the-ability-to-accept-constructive-critisism\/\">don\u2019t take criticism well<\/a>\u00a0and tend to personalize everything<\/li>\n<li>Micro followers tend to use\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scrumbum.com\/tag\/loser-words\/\">loser-words<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Where do microfollowers come from?<\/h3>\n<p>Unfortunately, schools and universities, particularly in Eastern Europe, specializing in graduating micro-followers. I wrote\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scrumbum.com\/initiative-for-the-non-initiated\/\">an article<\/a>\u00a0on one such case where, when a student attempted to lead he was basically kicked out of the college.<\/p>\n<p>These students arrive in the workforce and they get paired off with micromanagers, and tethered together, they weigh each other down as their careers move at a snail\u2019s pace, if at all, while their more nimble peers who learn to show initiative move ahead by leaps and bounds. Best case, by working long enough and gaining experience just through pure attrition, they somehow move up in an organization to themselves become micromanagers, and the cycle continues.<\/p>\n<h3>Can they be salvaged?<\/h3>\n<p>Some, and perhaps many, can. Early in their tenure at an organization, you can work with them and attempt to break them of these tendencies. We created a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scrumbum.com\/working-naked-principles-and-origins\/\">values statement<\/a>\u00a0specifically designed to empower and encourage people to show initiative. It is amazing to see the reaction, when people realize that they can actually step out and think for themselves; that they are powered to take the initiative and make their own decisions. In fact, some team members who started out as microfollowers became some of the best leaders I\u2019ve ever worked with.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, others will resist this with their every being. After much back and forth, you may determine that this person will always be a microfollower and the only recourse is to let them go. There are many companies that will be happy to have such a person and assign them to a micromanager, who will be fulfilled supervising such a willing supplicant.<\/p>\n<h3>Radical concepts<\/h3>\n<p>The opposite of micromanagement is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Holacracy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">holocracy<\/a>, where essentially everyone manages themselves. I don\u2019t believe true holocracy is possible, but we came very close. Our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scrumbum.com\/working-naked-principles-and-origins\/\">values statement<\/a> was meant to highlight the fact that we were free of schedules, fixed work locations and bosses.<\/p>\n<p>Even though I was the CEO, my internal title, and that of my COO was \u201cFacilitator\u201d. That meant I was there to help people do their jobs, not tell them how to do them or do them myself. This only works if you have a company full of self-starters, ready and willing to take the initiative. Microfollowers need to be quickly identified and converted to microleaders, or encouraged to find roles in more captive-employment type environments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the knowledgebase worker economy continues to transition to more agile, more remote, more dynamic and more empowered, your classic\u00a0micromanager\u00a0is a dying breed, for good reason. Micromanagement gets a bad reputation because of the pernicious effect is has on retarding the growth and productivity of teams and if left unchecked, how it can calcify entire [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,21],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v15.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Micro-followers - Centar NIT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/mikro-pratioci\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Micro-followers - Centar NIT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the knowledgebase worker economy continues to transition to more agile, more remote, more dynamic and more empowered, your classic\u00a0micromanager\u00a0is a dying breed, for good reason. 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