top of page

By:

Rahul Kulkarni

30 March 2025 at 3:32:54 pm

The Boundary Collapse

When kindness becomes micromanagement It started with a simple leave request.   “Hey, can I take Friday off? Need a personal day,” Meera messaged Rohit. Rohit replied instantly:   “Of course. All good. Just stay reachable if anything urgent comes up.”   He meant it as reassurance. But the team didn’t hear reassurance. They heard a rule.   By noon, two things had shifted inside The Workshop:   Meera felt guilty for even asking. Everyone else quietly updated their mental handbook: Leave is...

The Boundary Collapse

When kindness becomes micromanagement It started with a simple leave request.   “Hey, can I take Friday off? Need a personal day,” Meera messaged Rohit. Rohit replied instantly:   “Of course. All good. Just stay reachable if anything urgent comes up.”   He meant it as reassurance. But the team didn’t hear reassurance. They heard a rule.   By noon, two things had shifted inside The Workshop:   Meera felt guilty for even asking. Everyone else quietly updated their mental handbook: Leave is allowed… but not really. This is boundary collapse… when a leader’s good intentions unintentionally blur the limits that protect autonomy and rest. When care quietly turns into control Founders rarely intend to micromanage.   What looks like control from the outside often starts as care from the inside. “Let me help before something breaks.” “Let me stay involved so we don’t lose time.” “Loop me in… I don’t want you stressed.” Supportive tone.   Good intentions.   But one invisible truth defines workplace psychology: When power says “optional,” it never feels optional.
So when a client requested a revision, Rohit gently pinged:   “If you’re free, could you take a look?” Of course she logged in.   Of course she handled it.   And by Monday, the cultural shift was complete: Leave = location change, not a boundary.   A founder’s instinct had quietly become a system. Pattern 1: The Generous Micromanager Modern micromanagement rarely looks aggressive. It looks thoughtful :   “Let me refine this so you’re not stuck.” “I’ll review it quickly.”   “Share drafts so we stay aligned.”   Leaders believe they’re being helpful. Teams hear:   “You don’t fully trust me.” “I should check with you before finishing anything.”   “My decisions aren’t final.” Gentle micromanagement shrinks ownership faster than harsh micromanagement ever did because people can’t challenge kindness. Pattern 2: Cultural conditioning around availability In many Indian workplaces, “time off” has an unspoken footnote: Be reachable. Just in case. No one says it directly.   No one pushes back openly.   The expectation survives through habit: Leave… but monitor messages. Rest… but don’t disconnect. Recover… but stay alert. Contrast this with a global team we worked with: A designer wrote,   “I’ll be off Friday, but available if needed.” Her manager replied:   “If you’re working on your off-day, we mismanaged the workload… not the boundary.”   One conversation.   Two cultural philosophies.   Two completely different emotional outcomes.   Pattern 3: The override reflex Every founder has a version of this reflex.   Whenever Rohit sensed risk, real or imagined, he stepped in: Rewriting copy.   Adjusting a design.   Rescoping a task.   Reframing an email. Always fast.   Always polite.   Always “just helping.” But each override delivered one message:   “Your autonomy is conditional.” You own decisions…   until the founder feels uneasy.   You take initiative…   until instinct replaces delegation.   No confrontation.   No drama.   Just quiet erosion of confidence.   The family-business amplification Boundary collapse becomes extreme in family-managed companies.   We worked with one firm where four family members… founder, spouse, father, cousin… all had informal authority. Everyone cared.   Everyone meant well.   But for employees, decision-making became a maze: Strategy approved by the founder.   Aesthetics by the spouse.   Finance by the father. Tone by the cousin.   They didn’t need leadership.   They needed clarity.   Good intentions without boundaries create internal anarchy. The global contrast A European product team offered a striking counterexample.   There, the founder rarely intervened mid-stream… not because of distance, but because of design:   “If you own the decision, you own the consequences.” Decision rights were clear.   Escalation paths were explicit.   Authority didn’t shift with mood or urgency. No late-night edits.   No surprise rewrites.   No “quick checks.”   No emotional overrides. As one designer put it:   “If my boss wants to intervene, he has to call a decision review. That friction protects my autonomy.” The result:   Faster execution, higher ownership and zero emotional whiplash. Boundaries weren’t personal.   They were structural .   That difference changes everything. Why boundary collapse is so costly Its damage is not dramatic.   It’s cumulative.   People stop resting → you get presence, not energy.   People stop taking initiative → decisions freeze.   People stop trusting empowerment → autonomy becomes theatre.   People start anticipating the boss → performance becomes emotional labour.   People burn out silently → not from work, but from vigilance.   Boundary collapse doesn’t create chaos.   It creates hyper-alertness, the heaviest tax on any team. The real paradox Leaders think they’re being supportive. Teams experience supervision.   Leaders assume boundaries are obvious. Teams see boundaries as fluid. Leaders think autonomy is granted. Teams act as though autonomy can be revoked at any moment. This is the Boundary Collapse → a misunderstanding born not from intent, but from the invisible weight of power. Micromanagement today rarely looks like anger.   More often,   it looks like kindness without limits. (Rahul Kulkarni is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. He patterns the human mechanics of scaling where workplace behavior quietly shapes business outcomes. Views personal.)

Are Bihari Muslim Migrants Game-Changers in Maharashtra Elections?

Bihari Muslim

Even before the Maharashtra polls were announced, Ravi Sunder’s (name changed) daily calendar was choc-a-bloc, with meetings throughout the day. Originally from Bihar, Sunder, apart from being a top-rung corporate honcho, he is also the most sought-after power broker who has made Mumbai his home over the last two decades.


Sunder has been at the core of several discussions with Bihari migrants who come seeking his advice on various issues, from business to even politics. “Local issues will dominate the Maharashtra elections instead of party ideology, and Muslim migrant voters will play a significant role in the victory of most candidates,’ he points out further, adding that the electorate has seen through the faces of most politicians who have been shifting parties at the drop of a hat and that they have hung up their boots on them.


Instead, voters are now interested in seeing what they get in return for their votes, he says, continuing that while everyone is talking about the Marathas, OBCs, and Kunbi vote banks, what many political parties are ignoring is the vast migrant Muslim and Hindu vote banks from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which has grown tremendously over the years. Maharashtra, especially Mumbai, has a large migrant population, which is largely divided, he observes. While there are migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Rajasthan, Punjab, and the south of India, not all vote together. Each of them has different requirements.


“Traditionally, Biharis and UPiites have been voting for the BJP, but this time around they won’t do so. They will be voting for whoever is going to empower them instead.” he continues, adding that 10 per cent of the total population in Maharashtra, is that of migrants from Bihar. “There are one crore migrant Biharis currently living in Maharashtra and roughly 40 per cent of them have voter ID cards. 40 lakh Biharis will be making a huge difference in the state polls,” he says, adding that most of these migrants work as construction labour, hawkers, or in factories and end up staying in the state buying properties and have moved on to participate in local politics.


“More than the Hindus, the Muslim Biharis are participating in local politics. While some are political workers, some plan on fighting in the upcoming corporation elections. They have also realised that all this ideology is useless; whichever party empowers them with an election ticket, will vote for them. No party is taboo, but whichever party will give them a ticket or empower them is halal for them.”


He believes this trend was started by Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Initially, a lot of migrant Muslim Biharis joined MNS; after rinsing in the ranks, they switched over to join the Shiv Sena and later jumped over to the BJP. These Muslims, who were initially quite poor when they started, gradually became rich and powerful, and today they are dominating several pockets across Mumbai city as well.


Today many areas in and around Mumbai, such as Nagpada, Walkeshwar near Malabar Hill (which has a growing Bihari population from Darbhanga), Dharavi, Sion, Kurla, Kalina, Ghatkopar, Antop Hill, Anushakti Nagar, and Shivaji Nagar, have a considerable Muslim migrant population from Bihar.


Traditional Muslim voters who once supported the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, and Samajwadi Party have realized their potential. Now, they are contemplating new political alliances, with the game-changer being the entry of migrant Muslims from Bihar. It would be interesting to see how they will impact the political fortunes of several candidates in these assembly polls.


(The author is a senior journalist based in Mumbai. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page