Micro managers
No, I don’t mean small sergeants but those obsessed with getting involved in absolutely everything.
I’ve been working recently with a team I’m not famiar with. This always presents problems to controllers; you have absolutely no idea about the dynamics of the way the officers work, you don’t know any of the officers, which means you don’t know their personalities or capabilities.
I wasn’t filled with confidence when my colleague with whom I was sharing the division, said: “Do you know Sergeant Wombat? shes a knob.”
It’s always great when the focal point of the shift is a knob, it makes your job as a controller so much more difficult.
It wasn’t long before I got to see what my colleague meant. Sgt. Wombat is one of those supervisors who apparently has absolutely zero trust in her own team, to the extent that she feels the need to micro-manage absolutely everything.
She spends more time on the radio than all the other officers put together. This is usually finding out who is doing what asking for updates on every ongoing job.
She clearly doesn’t feel comfortable leaving people to get on with the job or to let people consult her if when they think it necessary. She has to know the ins & outs of a cat’s arse on who is doing what, when, why & how.
So when we had a potentially serious RTC on the division this week, sticking her oar in every 2 minutes just pissed everyone off, including me.
Traffic officers are often some of the most experienced officers on the streets. They usually know their job pretty well too. You can rely on them to knuckle down do their job pretty thoroughly & professionally. They know what’s required & how to do it. A section acting sergeant with 10 minutes in the job & no road policing experience doesn’t. Sticking stripes on your arm doesn’t give you knowledge or experience.
Sgt Wombat’s supervisory style takes the form of calling up every 30 seconds making helpful suggestions about where the traffic units should be deployed, what they should do when they get there everything else up to including the best filler for their sandwiches.
Every time she speaks on the radio is time that neither I nor the traffic units can speak & quite frankly, what we have to say is more important than the inane suggestions &Â questions she keeps asking. If knowledge is power, being devoid of knowledge is paralysingly. At least I think that’s what Sgt Wombat thinks. Her only saving grace is that at least she is out on the street, in her car, & making her way to it also. Not like the micro-managers who are even worse in that they just sit on their arse in an office barking orders & instructions & never offering to help when you’re short of units.
In the end I get fed up & I speak for all parties when I say “Can you just leave it to traffic to sort out”, in an exasperated attempt to get her to shut the fuck up.
This is met by a few seconds of silence then “Can you ring me on my mobile?” Like if I had time to ring you on your mobile I wouldnt be telling you to shut up so I can get out on the radio to deal with the incident that is currently running.
My colleague leans over & touches me on the arm, “I told you she was a knob.”
Oi says:
I inherited a team from a micro manager.
It took some time before I could reinstill the confidence that had been knocked out of them.
Initially, whenever I turned up to a job, everything would come to a grinding halt, while they stood round waiting for me to task or retask them.
Having to tell them they were big boys and girls with several years in The Job behind most of them – and they shouldnt need thair hands held – didnt go down well, really……
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:40 am
allcoppedout says:
Wombat sounds like a gem, that is in need of polishing off. Supervision is generally dire in our local force for the opposite reason – they are all, in the old vernacular ’stuck up old drippers’. She may cool off, but generally they don’t. I had one like this who tried to get you to do all 99 things that didn’t matter and then bollocked you for doing the one that did.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:23 am
Paul says:
TBF, oi, to that team, not only will they lack confidence but they will be scared.
Micromanagers are very often bullies and operate using fear and blame avoidance – the argument goes something like “well, if you did what I tell you everything would work perfectly, so it’s your own fault if anything goes wrong”.
This is a microcosm of this current governments attitude, viz, our methods are absolutely perfect, it’s your implementation of them that is wrong. In this sort of situation the only thing to do is “stick to the absolute letter of the law”.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:13 am
dickiebo says:
You’re for it, me lad!!!!
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:13 am
Andy W says:
In Paul’s second paragraph he very accurately describes the favoured ‘management’ style of ACPO officers throughout the country since 2nd May 1997. Sergeant Knob looks to me to be destined for rapid ascension to those hallowed ranks.
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:52 am
Hogday says:
Behind every `Wombat` is a supervisor, further up the chain, who is not doing their job and sorting out her worst excesses. I may be mistaken, but I thought “Wombat” was the trade name of one of those `femine deodourants` advertised in the early `70’s?
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:22 am
MTG says:
You must expect newly promoted and conscientious managers to ‘get in the way’. It’s only a problem when teething troubles fail to resolve themselves.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:03 am
Pc A Hunn says:
Sounds like my old Sgt. I came out of CID back to uniform to be presented with a Sgt with 4 years in and a gob like the Watford Gap. After several arguments about her patronising me I just chose to ignore her which drove her up the wall. Luckily my work record and popularity with the other supervision stood me in good stead when she tried to do my legs. I was not her only victim and I pointed it out to the Guv.
A 6 month spell as custody skipper taught her to wind her neck in as micro managing a micro environment had her nearly bald with stress.
This sort of idiot is clearly over compensating for their lack of experience. Give her enough rope and she’ll soon hang herself.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:33 am
Stressedoutcop says:
Can a female be a knob?? There must be a female equivalent !!
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Zac Smith says:
Got to agree with Hogday here. Why isn’t someone senior taking her aside? As an enthusiastic young officer in the Army I would be regularly taken aside by a Sergeant/CSM and “given words of advice”. It wasn’t unknown for officers who failed to heed those words of advice to be given a smack, which sure beat the alternative of being dropped in it when it really mattered.
200 – is that not something expected of the old and bold?
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Civ_In_The_City says:
I`ve got an aggressive micro-manager. Not only does he vigorously defend his ‘patch’, he is also in the habit of trying to hoover up work from other areas.
He`s very enthusiastic but is also obsessed with knowing every up to the minute detail of what the team is working on. God forbid another manager finds out first.
Sadly his goldfish sized memory means he`ll be back around in 30 minutes for a refresher.
Amazingly he has near perfect recall when he needs to impress in meetings, dropping in just enough buzz-words to pull the wool.
It`s an art form in a way.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Tony F says:
In the last company I worked for, I had a ‘wombat’ type ‘manager’ He was universally hated by the engineers and customers alike. In fact, it was his lack of letting things alone, cost that company a number of big contracts. I now work for the company that has them! Happy customers too!
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Blue Eyes says:
My boss is exactly like this. He believes that he must be seen to be bustling at all times. I don’t know what he thinks might happen if he stops bustling and lets his minions get on with the job in hand. There are two main problems: one is that he appears not to trust any of us and the other is that he is a bully.who will not accept any other “way” than “his way”. Bullies are generally hiding a lack of confidence and I suspect that Wombat feels constantly and hopelessly out of her depth.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:31 am
TaffJ says:
Stressedoutcop, I think there is a word for a female knob but it is a very, very bad word
February 5th, 2010 at 4:16 am