Dick Spencer

Case 1: Dick Spencer

Major Issues

In an attempt to address the inherited problems that faced Spencer, some major issues arose that must be addressed. These major issues include Spencer’s perceived micromanagement style, employee resistance to change, and the low morale of the employees in the organization.

Spencer’s Micromanagement Style

Spencer admits that accounting and human relations were his weakest subjects during his Master’s program which he tried to overcompensate for by attempting “to know in detail the accounting procedures [through] long hours of concentration and detailed conversations with the accounting staff’ (Buller & Schulter, 2003, p. 13) as well as practicing management by walking around. The problem was employees perceived his attempts as micro-management. This became apparent by some of the comments made by employees. One of the managers in the siding department expressed his frustration with the statement “‘I wish to hell he’d say up in the front office where he belongs. Whoever heard of a plant manager who has time to wander around the plant all the time? Why doesn’t he tend to his paper work and let us tend to our business?” (Buller & Schuler, 2003, p. 12). Another accounting staff member voiced their concerns to a co-worker with the following statements. “‘For a guy who’s a vice-president, he sure spends a lot of time breathing down our necks. Why doesn’t he simply tell us the kind of systems he would like to try, and let us do the experimenting and work our the budget?’” (Buller & Schuler, 2003, p. 13). Managers must be mindful that continuously asking employees questions can be perceived negatively by employees (Peters & Austin, 1985, p. 12) as witnessed by Spencer’s accounting department employees.

A major problem with micromanagement is it inhibits the employees need to think because the manager expects them to follow a specific process (Wright, 2000, p. 1). Micromanagers are best described by Marino in the following statement:

Micromanagers make up for [employees] total lack of imagination by deflating ideas and creating chaos over minutiae. They see all things in black and white. They manage by the numbers, and any number that is red turns them into raging bulls (1998, p. 22).

There are several characteristics of micromanagers including not accepting responsibility or accountability, always placing the blame on someone or something, exploiting their employees rather than developing them, like to control situations and results, rarely hire employees that will challenge them, dislike competition, discourage creativity, have one management style for all employees no matter their differences, “tend to dumb down their companies” (Marino, 1998, p. 22), and “create the problems they micromanage”