Sometimes, when a manager insists on controlling every detail, the best response is to give them exactly what they want.

So, what would you do if your new manager demanded to be involved in every decision, no matter how small?

Would you just fill them in on the important things? Or run your entire day by them?

In today’s story, a hands-on manager gets overwhelmed by the very control he sought.

Here’s how it played out.

Manager wants to micromanage everyone and everything – sounds good to us!

MBA, Master in Business Administration.

More often than not, those who possess such a degree are neither masters of anything, nor business savvy.

Unfortunately, MBAs often possess enough fluency of buzz words, jargons, and acronyms that they fool many HR departments into believing they bring tremendous value. Their perceived value is often far greater than their actual value.

The company I work at was recently acquired. It was a profitable company with a great culture.

This all changed when the new owners decided our company was absolutely terrible and needed to be fixed with “structure, hierarchy, and order.”

The new CEO was keen on finding someone to micromanage and ensure discipline.

A new CEO came on board, fired all the old managers, and hired someone with an MBA to manage the department I work at.

The CEO is keen to “turn things around” and ensure we obey, submit, and kowtow.

This new manager, Bob, is a company man who came from the acquiring firm.

Instead of understanding the who, what, when, where, why, and how of every person and process, he began his reign of terror by ruling by fear, whether it’s accusing us of inefficiencies and laziness (e.g., why aren’t you staying later like everyone else), nitpicking our work, or micromanaging things he has zero understanding of.

He loves preaching about MBA management techniques, leadership, standardization, metrics in matrixes, AI automation, and anything else that sounds good on paper.

Note the term “preach” because that’s all he does. He does not execute or lead; he just talks and “manages” but fails to understand.

Bob makes it clear immediately that he wants to know everything going on.

Because of who Bob is, we all have become yes-man to his every will. We keep our head down, nod and smile, His fluent command of endless buzz-phrases, acronyms, and bullshit has us so awed, we mostly just sit and stare in silence.

The highlight of every meeting is that he would talk to the very last second of the allotted time.

But whenever a meeting somehow ends earlier than the allotted time, he would tell us “I’m giving you some time back”. This implies that he owns our time when we’re here.

Because Bob wants to be the center of attention, he’s asked us to involve him with everything.

A hands-off manager who just loves taking credit for our work and micromanaging us wants us to involve him in EVERYTHING? You bet we will comply.

They give him what he wants and then some.

From that day onward, everyone in our department asks Bob in writing for his thoughts on just about anything, from simple approvals to his input on complex design of processes he has no understanding of.

Even for items that do not require his action, we CC him to keep him in the loop. Every correspondence, even with vendors about basic stuff like updating credit application details, will involve Bob.

Because Bob loves meetings so much, we invite him to talk at length in meetings about trivial matters that absolutely have no real-world consequences.

We talk about everything he wants to get involved in.

We know how much he loves listening to his own voice.

There is something so magical about manipulating a manager into inundating us with pointless paperwork, processes, and meetings.

Not only does it ensure the manager is aligned with our day-to-day (so he would be responsible if something goes wrong), but it also makes the manager feel good about doing something, and it makes us feel good about doing nothing much at all.

Wow! He must be one of the busiest people in the company!

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit relate to this story.

Here’s a great idea.

This person has a small disagreement.

Wonder if this is the same manager in the story – sure sounds like it!

That’s one way to keep a clueless manager busy.

Wouldn’t want to be that manager! Sounds like his day is wasted with a ton of busy work, but his time could probably be better spent elsewhere.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.