Condo Living - Board Micromanagement

Managing Micromanagement Part 1
A guide to make everyone's life a little better.

The following article was published by Julie Adaman.  Julie is a community association management employment consultant.  I thought the article was a good one regarding micromanagement by board members. 

If you are a community manager in the Midtown area, I bet you have experienced the micromanagement personality.  If you are a micromanaging board member, take a step back and give this article some thought.

Micromanagement you "To direct or control in a detailed, often meddlesome manner."(1)

My working definition is: The over involvement of a Board or Board members in the day to day business of running a community association.

We don't need to belabor the point, but mostly, micromanagement is time-consuming, energy draining, ever maddening, and demoralizing busy-work that accomplishes little. Micromanagers call, email, hover and then they call some more. They want to know what's going on. They hold meetings. They hold more meetings. They keep you on the phone. They call back. They re-write your correspondence. They want the financials done differently. They find the 10-cent error on page 24. They find the one typo on a 30-page board pack and call you on it. They re-invent the wheel.  They give constant and detailed feedback focusing on minutiae. They suck up your time and drain your energy. They suck up their own time and energy as well, though few seem to recognize it. In short, micromanagement in our industry by a Board or Board member translates as the over-the-top involvement in the day-to-day business affairs of the community.

We know they do it, but do we know why do they micromanage? Why, yes, we do.

1. The micromanagers have no idea of their true role. I am convinced that a lot of a Boards or Board member's micromanaging ways are due to the fact that they have no idea what is expected of them, or of what their duties are, thus they jump in with all four feet in an attempt to manage it all. They were unclear on their role as Board members, believing they are functionaries instead of policymakers and leaders.

2. The micromanager is asked to be on the Board because of their profession and then acts as an unpaid staff member.  Because the Board member was called to service for a specific reason (ex: they are a CPA), that member ends up reviewing items specific to their profession. Unfortunately, that Board member, being unclear on their true role, doesn't just interpret the facets of their specialty for the Board; they end up over-scrutinizing each task or performing that task themselves. In this very common scenario, that Board member has been set up to micromanage: The professional has unwittingly been asked to be a staff member without pay. This form of micromanagement was not exactly the intention of the Board or the volunteer, but it is the end result.

3. Micromanagers may be fearful.  Many micromanaging Boards or Board members fear making a wrong decision and then answering to the membership who was last seen carrying torches and pitchforks. Of course, the Board could make the all right decisions and still face the wrath of unhinged homeowners.  Not a great position in which to be, and one which we need to understand from our side of the table. Everyone wants to be liked; unfortunately sitting on a Board of Directors isn't always conducive to that need.

4. Sometimes, micromanagers are just plain bored. For those of us who have managed retirement communities, we know boredom plays a major role in micromanagement. Many folks may have retired too early thinking golf and poker would take up the slack, yet come to find out they just don't have enough activities to fill up the time on their hands. Thus, the community association and/or its manager become the hobby of the eternally bored (this is especially problematic for site managers).

5. People micromanage because they have been burned. Many of us have taken over a community where the previous manager was less than competent. If a Board or Board members have been through this scenario once, twice, or more (not all that unusual) - it can lead to a serious distrust of all management. The result is the Board, or a member thereof, will micromanage the staff until they feel comfortable with that staff's capabilities.

6. Many micromanagers are unable to subordinate the self (they have big egos). Hard as it is to believe, many people derive an ego-feed from serving on a Board of Directors. Some of the more extreme cases micromanage because, after all, they are so smart, the association manager (and the rest of the Board for that matter) couldn't possibly do as good a job as they can and they are  indispensable to the community. Thinking you're indispensable = a puffed up view of the self.

7. Micromanagers believe they care about the community more than the manager because they own the asset. In the eyes of many micromanagers, their actions are justified in that they have a vested (real estate) or political (neighbors to deal with) interest in the community, where staff does not.  The fundamental premise is flawed in that the manager is and should always be impartial to the various agendas of individuals created by both real or perceived problems and issues within that community. This impartial position is only available to one who has no special political connection to anyone or anything in that community.

Micromanagement is the number one reason managers find their job frustrating. It's the number one reason cited by on site managers when they want to leave their current position.  Micromanagement may very well be one of our industry's largest challenges.  We all know about it, but like the weather, what are we going to do about it?  Seemingly, not a lot; however, if we can understand why it occurs, then perhaps we can also use some simple as well as more advanced techniques to better deal with micromanagement to make our lives better, more efficient, effective, and far less maddening.
Stay tuned for more next month!

(1) www.thefreedictionary.com

Julie Adamen is president of Adamen Inc., a consulting and placement firm specializing in the community management industry. Julie can be reached via email at julie@adamen-inc.com or through her website www.adamen-inc.com.  

The blog is posted to Midtown Patch by Tim Huffman, with permission.