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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.)

Cultural Collapse

When the custodians of culture become its gravediggers, decline is inevitable. The Asiatic Society of Mumbai (ASM), the city’s 221-year-old institution housed in the stately Town Hall on the steps of Horniman Circle, was once a citadel of knowledge, a hub of learning that connected India to the intellectual revolutions of the world. Today, it stands as a monument to neglect, wracked by infighting, financial collapse and administrative paralysis.


What began as an assembly of scholars in 1804, preserving treasures such as one of two known original copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy, has devolved into a sorry theatre of mismanagement. The Society, which boasts a membership of nearly 3,000, now barely sees 150 active participants. Its elections have been annulled by the charity commissioner, its finances are in shambles, and its leadership seems more intent on clinging to office than rescuing the institution from ruin. The current president, lauded as the first woman to lead the ASM, is at the end of her six-year term but even her departure is marred by controversy. Elections that were supposed to usher in a new committee have been declared illegal. The Society drifts leaderless, yet refuses to hold fresh elections.


At the heart of this crisis lies financial rot. The ASM has been bleeding money for years, losing nearly Rs. 1 crore annually. It survives on erratic grants from the state and central governments, but its leadership has failed to secure even the most basic funding assurances. Officials in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation recount how the Society’s office bearers were indifferent when asked to follow up for additional grants. The result is a hand-to-mouth existence where even staff salaries are uncertain, and endowment funds meant for specific purposes are reportedly being diverted to keep the lights on.


The institution requires at least Rs. 3 crore annually to operate smoothly, yet no one seems capable or willing to fight for it. Successive committees have failed to lobby for the long-promised ‘Institute of National Importance’ status, which would have secured central funding and recognition. Instead, the management frittered away limited resources on wasteful projects.


Of the sanctioned 45 staff positions, barely 25 are filled. Crucial posts of the Librarian, Deputy Librarian and Archivist remain vacant. Many employees still draw salaries based on the 6th Pay Commission, eight years after the 7th became the standard. It is no surprise that preservation work has slowed to a crawl, leaving 3,000 manuscripts and 280,000 rare books vulnerable to deterioration.


If the Society’s founders, who envisioned it as a beacon of Oriental and Western scholarship, could see it today, they would be aghast.


Saving the ASM demands a ruthless cleaning-up. The Society must be pulled from the grip of aging elites who treat it as a private club rather than a public trust. In a city that prides itself on heritage, it is shameful that one of its greatest cultural assets teeters on the brink of oblivion.

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