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Micro surgery? Can This Man Be Cured?By Rick Horowitz My name is Rick, and I'm a micromanager. I don't remember when the symptoms first started -- I guess it kind of snuck up on me. But I know that I have it now, and I know that it isn't good for me. That's what everybody says, anyway: Being a micromanager is bad. Worse than bad -- it's terrible. Terrible for me, and terrible for the country. So I'm trying to get help, and the first step to getting help is admitting I have a problem. I'll be honest with you -- it's been a real struggle for me. Admitting it, I mean. For the longest time, I didn't think it was anything to worry about. I just figured I was doing the same kinds of things everybody else was doing, and I never even thought of it as "micromanaging."
I'd read a newspaper, or catch the news on TV or bounce around the Web, and I'd notice things. Sometimes I'd even remember them for a day or two afterwards, and sometimes, if I thought they were really important things -- wars, hurricanes, whatever -- even longer than that. They'd just stick in my head -- it certainly wasn't anything I was doing consciously. And then sometimes, and I guess this is where the alarm bells should have gone off, I'd find myself thinking about those things. And sometimes, I'd even form opinions. Or make suggestions. Try to change things. It was classic micromanagement behavior -- I see that now. But if anybody had called me on it back then -- "Hey, Rick, there you go again, micromanaging" -- I'd have given them a real fight. "What's wrong with having your eyes open?" I'd have said to them. "What's wrong with sweating the details?" That's the way I looked at it back then -- somebody had to sweat the details, and if the people in charge weren't doing it, it might as well be me. At worst, I'd have said I was doing a little "managing." But micromanaging? Never. It was the president who set me straight. I'm sure he didn't know he was talking to me personally, but every time I turned on the news I'd see him, giving speeches or making threats, and the more I listened to what he was saying, the more I started to understand: There's absolutely no difference between "managing" and "micromanaging." Once you start doing one, you're doing the other. And I could tell by the way he kind of sneered when he said it -- "micromanage" -- just what he thought about it, and about the kind of people who'd do it. Lots of the president's Republican friends kept saying it, too -- "micromanage" -- with that very same sneer. And it finally dawned on me, from what the president kept saying and from what his Republican friends kept saying, just how awful "micromanaging" really was, and how the kind of person who'd go in for "micromanaging" was exactly the kind of person who'd be "dictating to the generals on the ground" and even "waving the white flag of surrender" the first chance he got. That wasn't me. At least it wasn't the me I wanted to be. But I had to face the facts -- and stop facing the facts. So no more newspapers, no more TV, no more Internet, nothing that can possibly lure me down that "micromanaging" road ever again. I'm through with paying attention. From now on, I let the president do all my thinking. Posted 5/4/07.
You'll manage so much better when you click to "Rick's"!
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Rick Horowitz
