What is macromanagement?

When you’re managing projects, one of the most important tenets to adhere to is trust. Placing faith in your team is vital to seeing your project to its successful completion. At the core, the idea of macromanagement involves trusting and empowering your team members to accomplish tasks autonomously, granting them the freedom to make decisions within a strategic framework. Learn how can you take advantage of macromanaging in your office.

Micromanagement vs micromanagement

You’ve likely heard of micromanagement, where managers and supervisors take excessive supervision over their teams, focusing on the minor details or aspects of an employee’s workday. This leads to self-doubt, mistrust, and ultimately a setup towards conflict or unproductivity.

However, macromanagement refers to a leadership style that emphasizes overseeing the broader aspects of a project or team—allowing autonomy and encouraging strategic thinking. Contrary to micromanagement, where every detail is closely scrutinized and second-guessed, macromanagement involves concentrating on the overarching goals and vision instead of the individual actions of each employee in the workplace.

In macromangagement, supervisors delegate responsibilities to employees with the mindset that they trust that their employees can fulfill these roles. As long as the results are met, it matters less how teams achieve that result than how it fits in the overall completion of the project.

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Macromanagement: advantages and disadvantages

This style of priority-driven project management can empower employees to feel confident in their roles, boosting morale by helping teams feel like they can own their results. Macromanagement can also encourage innovation: by allowing freedom and leeway within a defined structure, this style of project management can promote creative thinking and problem-solving—both through methodologies as well as resource utilization. If a project is constrained by resource or financial limitations, employees can “think outside the box” and explore different ways to achieve the results they need.

However, macromanagement can be detrimental to projects that don’t have clearly established guidelines, regulations, schedules, or timeframes. Some employees might feel lost without a potential lack of guidance, leading to uncertainty without detailed instructions. And without periodic check-ins from a project’s steering committee, there might be little to no oversight of how teams operate. This can result in deviations from the overarching objectives.

Therefore, it’s important to use the freedom that macromanagement provides to create an operational plan containing specific details on what’s expected in completion, schedules for completing various aspects of a project, and when to check in with clients to illustrate progress. This fits with the agile methodology of project management, where overall goals are broken down into smaller chunks and scrum meetings are regularly held to check up on progress and results.

Macromanagement embodies a balanced leadership style that fosters growth, creativity, and accountability within a team or organization. It’s about providing the necessary guidance and resources while allowing individuals the freedom to excel. Striking this balance empowers teams to thrive, contribute ideas, and drive success while aligning with the larger strategic objectives. For more ideas on how to manage projects, check out more tips on how to recognize shareholders vs. stakeholders or the waterfall methodology of project management.