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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.)

RSS keen on keeping Amit Shah in the cold

The Mahayuti 2.0 cabinet cements Modi’s dominance and the RSS’s ideological oversight in Maharashtra

Amit Shah

Mumbai: The absence of ministers aligned with Home Minister Amit Shah in the new Mahayuti cabinet led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has raised eyebrows, triggering speculations that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) may have moved to curtail Shah’s influence in the state.


Maharashtra expanded its cabinet on Sunday, swearing in 33 cabinet ministers and six ministers of state at Raj Bhavan in Nagpur. In keeping with the performance and contribution of each of the three Mahayuti parties in the coalition’s stunning electoral success in the Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured the lion’s share with 16 cabinet berths, followed by nine for Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and eight for the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).


The reshuffle introduced a youthful tilt, with 18 new faces joining the council while as many as 13 former ministers were dropped during the cabinet expansion that took place in Nagpur.


Notably absent from the new cabinet are individuals known to be close to Shah, a political tactician often credited with the BJP’s meteoric rise over the past decade. As per sources who spoke to The Perfect Voice, the absence of veteran BJP leader from Chandrapur Sudhir Mungantiwar, considered to be a confidante of Shah in Maharashtra, underscored this pattern.


Over the past year, tensions between Shah and the RSS have bubbled to the surface. Dattatreya Hosabale, the Sarkaryavah (of the General Secretary) of the RSS, reportedly confronted Shah over the induction of senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan into the BJP.


An apparently curt retort issued by Shah to Hosbale - “Politics is not your business. Let us do politics in our own way” - did little to endear him to the Sangh.


Relations further soured when, following a public statement by BJP President J.P. Nadda that appeared critical of the RSS, Shah sought to meet RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to clarify the party’s position. As per sources, Shah’s overtures were reportedly rebuffed as Bhagwat reportedly refused to meet the Home Minister, signalling a rare public rebuke to the powerful BJP satrap from the Sangh leadership.


“Amitbhai had gone to meet Mohanji at the Sangh’s Jhandewalan’s office in Delhi. Mohanji was present there but he outrightly refused to meet Amitbhai,” said a source.


Mungantiwar’s exclusion is the latest consequences of this falling-out. Earlier, the ouster of C.T. Ravi as BJP general secretary was also seen as a stern message to Shah.


The biggest confirmation of Shah’s diminishing influence came when his bete noire Devendra Fadnavis was chosen for the coveted post of Maharashtra Chief Minister. By promoting Fadnavis – a leader with whom Shah has clashed in the past – the RSS and PM Modi are reportedly sending a message about where ultimate authority lies.


The RSS, for its part, has little tolerance for figures who appear to put personal ambition above the organization’s broader ideological goals. Shah’s brusque style and political pragmatism, while effective in winning some elections, have also queered the pitch in some states where friction between the top BJP brass and the local leadership has translated into bad results for the party. This has drawn criticism from Sangh stalwarts who prefer a more consultative approach.


Modi and Shah have long been seen as the twin architects of the BJP’s dominance. Though their partnership is often described as seamless, divergences in strategy and priorities occasionally surface. Shah is known for his hard-nosed approach and backroom deals - the BJP’s principal trouble-shooter.


The RSS’s priorities often differ from those of Shah, whose realpolitik sometimes clashes with the Sangh’s ideological purism. By sidelining Shah’s allies in Maharashtra, the RSS is likely signalling its preference for a less transactional and more ideologically aligned leadership in the state.


Furthermore, with Nadda’s term as party president nearing its end, speculation is rife that the next president will be someone at odds with Shah. This is likely to curtail Shah’s influence over state BJP leaderships.

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