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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.)

Konkan’s Crucible

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If Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts are the hotbeds in the Konkan in the upcoming Assembly polls, then the Kudal Assembly constituency (in Sindhudurg) is its crucible.


The Assembly segment has long a stage for fierce sabre-rattling between the Rane clan and the undivided Shiv Sena, and now the Sena (UBT) under Uddhav Thackeray.


The present contest is between BJP leader Narayana Rane’s elder son, Nilesh Rane – contesting on a Shiv Sena ticket - against the incumbent MLA Vaibhav Naik, from the rival Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT). The fracturing of the Shiv Sena into rival factions and the intense personal rivalry that has long defined the region’s politics has made the Kudal contest especially intense this time around.


This Assembly segment used to be Narayan Rane’s veritable fiefdom, and he held it five times prior to delimitation and once after the 2008 delimitation, winning the 2009 Assembly polls.


However, in a stunning setback to the Konkan strongman, Rane, then in the Congress, was comprehensively routed the (undivided) Shiv Sena’s Vaibhav Naik by a massive margin of more than 10,200 votes in the 2014 Assembly polls.


This had resulted in a comeback for Shiv Sena in the Konkan. Despite Mr. Rane’s long shadow over the coastal Malwan belt, a surge of popular anger against his strong-arm tactics coupled with sanction to controversial ecological projects in the verdant Sindhudurg led to his undoing.


Naik repeated his performance in the 2019 Assembly polls as well, where all of Rane’s efforts to supplant him came a cropper.


But this time, the terrain is different. The once-solid base of the Shiv Sena has split, with the Shinde faction drawing support away from Naik, diluting his previous stronghold. Naik’s past successes, including significant margins over prominent rivals like Narayan Rane and independent candidate Ranjit Desai, seem to have diminished under the current political turbulence.


The present clime has provided an ideal opportunity to Nilesh Rane, a former MP, who is now seeking political validation by hoping to score a big victory from Kudal.


In a curious turn, just last year, Nilesh announced his withdrawal from active politics. His abrupt ‘exit’ from the political scene was accompanied by a public statement expressing his disinterest in continuing in electoral politics. Yet, he soon reversed his decision.


Nilesh, seeking to avenge his father’s Assembly election defeat and rehabilitate himself, has had to switch parties – from the BJP to ally Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena – as a condition to contest in the arena.


The Rane family’s entrenched political presence in the Konkan region, especially through Narayan Rane’s decades-long career, is no small advantage for Nilesh. He himself is a seasoned campaigner in the Malwan belt. With a background steeped in both grassroots efforts and high-level political manoeuvring, his candidacy offers more than just the name recognition of his family. His credentials are bolstered further by his father’s recent success in the Lok Sabha elections, where Narayan Rane garnered a notable 26,236 votes from Kudal, signalling the Rane brand’s sway over the region.


That said, Nilesh will have to tread carefully against the experienced Vaibhav Naik, no mean opponent himself.

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