Making blanket demands is never advisable, and making rules that are completely inflexible is bound to result in unintended and unaccounted-for consequences. If it isn’t broken don’t fix it, but for some reason, nearly every egomaniac new manager is determined to change things that are working just fine.
Similarly, Micromanaging and undermining your workers’ autonomy literally leaves you solely responsible for all the comings and goings and going ons of the workplace. While this might sound nice for those out there who desire complete control, you’ll soon realize the impossibility of this and how undesirable and unworkable it is to need every action and every little bit of information to pass between your ears. When everything comes to a standstill while everyone waits on your next command or nervously produces at a snail’s pace for fear of making a mistake, then you know that you’ve made a severe management error.
This boss demanded that the entire office take their lunch at exactly high noon. What, do they moonlight as a gunfighter in an old Western Gunslinger film or something? Who knows what the reasoning for this decision was—beyond a desire for complete control over the staff—but it ended with a predictable outcome when they were left alone in the office to ringing phones and customers as everyone dropped what they were doing to take lunch when the clock struck noon.
