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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.)

The NIMBY Syndrome

Updated: Oct 22, 2024


NIMBY

In a city in India, the local civic administration was searching for a suitable open space within their jurisdiction for ‘developing’ a new dump yard for the city garbage as the existing one was filled to its capacity. They undertook a survey and shortlisted a couple of sites which were reserved for the same purpose many years ago as per their development plan. So, that land was the official property of the urban local body. They started preparing the land to receive tons and tons of garbage every day from the city.


However, the city administration did not consider the fact that there were hundreds of many new, multistoried residential complexes and housing facilities in the vicinity of this land they had selected for the dump yard. These were constructed over the past few years and had spread like mushrooms in a forest. The residents living there got an inkling of the plan of local civic body to use the adjacent land for dumping of the garbage.


Hundreds and thousands of residents came together to raise their voice against this proposed dump yard. Why were they opposing? Simple. Those wise men, women and children living there knew that if such dump yard comes up in the vicinity, it will cause unprecedented damage not only to the environment but also to their own health, their life will be like living in hell, they might lose the existing natural beauty, their surroundings will be severely polluted soon, it will create unbearable stench etc etc.


Like other ‘normal humans’, they were ‘victims’ of the NIMBY Syndrome. No..no.. it is not any genetic disorder or any medical condition. It is a mind set we all have developed over the period. It is Not In My Back Yard mentality. ‘I will keep my house clean and hygienic thereby generate waste in the process then I will keep it out of my house so it goes out of my house, out of sight and out of mind…but if you are trying to get it back in my backyard or in the vicinity of my residential area, I will strongly oppose it’ ! because of this mentality of the citizens, it has become very difficult for civic bodies to manage the huge volumes of waste that keep on accumulating.


But then why do the local civic bodies insist on using open dumping as the most common method of waste disposal when there is so much resistance from the communities? To understand this, let us learn more about this method of waste disposal. Open dumping simply refers to disposal of municipal solid waste on open land.


It does not have any specific infrastructure or facility to take care of the hazardous elements in the waste that keeps on piling up for days, months and years. Within a couple of years, you will find that what was a plain, flat land surface earlier has turned into a huge, tall, towering ‘mountain’ of garbage. Through the next articles, we will study the ‘anatomy’ of such open dumping ground. Till then, enjoy the weekend!


(The writer is an environment specialist. Views personal.)

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