micromanage
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Usage
What does micromanage mean? To micromanage is to control and guide something with excessive attention to detail.Micromanage is most often used in business and industry when a manager or someone in authority tries to control the details their subordinates or colleagues should take care of. For example, if the boss of a company does the work of their employees to save time instead of letting the employees do the work, they are micromanaging.Micromanage can also be used outside of business, as with group projects, team sports, relationships, and everyday life. For example, if you tell your roommate in detail how to wash the dishes even though they know how to wash dishes, you are micromanaging your roommate.Example: Maxime always finds a way to micromanage our projects, making everyone feel useless.
Other Word Forms
- micromanagement noun
- micromanager noun
Etymology
Origin of micromanage
First recorded in 1970–75; micro- ( def. ) + manage ( def. )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I kind of could have tunnel vision and just let it go and just hand it over to them to not micromanage anything or try to eavesdrop because I was like, “Well, that’s not really my job here” and I just trusted Joachim so much.
From Los Angeles Times
Blankfein’s 2002 Goldman performance review, pictured in his memoir, listed feedback on areas for improvement including: “Better listening skills; more inclusive, less dominant in meetings; can be overly harsh, adversarial, and intimidating; tendency to micromanage; inflexible, not open to other opinions;…needs to expand his external presence; become more statesmanlike and positive; willingness to occasionally lose a debate or argument.”
Its role isn’t to micromanage decisions but to ensure transparency and to guarantee investors that financial institutions can fail without bringing down the broader economy.
From Barron's
The deal would let the union micromanage work at the plant.
“The Court can readily imagine scenarios where the federal executive must legitimately vary its use of law enforcement resources from one state to the next, and there is no precedent for a court to micromanage such decisions,” Menendez wrote in the ruling.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
