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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.)

Varsity Turmoil

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Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and other elite Indian academic institutions increasingly find themselves in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. So-called ideological battles waged in the campuses of such varsities needlessly deepen social divides. JNU’s recent scuffle during a University Governing Body Meeting (UGBM), where students from leftist groups clashed with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) members over alleged derogatory remarks about Lord Ram, reveal a pattern across elite institutes where a narrow ideological stance often dictates what can or cannot be voiced on campus.


The ABVP, the student wing affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), issued a scathing condemnation, accusing leftist students of attempting to stoke communal disharmony by disrespecting Hindu religious icons with a deliberate attempt to provoke.


The Ramjanmabhoomi dispute, centering on the birthplace of Lord Ram and the contested site in Ayodhya, has been one of India’s most politically charged issues for decades. Left-leaning academics, many of whom have had their haunts in JNU, have played a highly contentious role in this narrative, often distorting and selectively interpreting historical evidence and, in some cases, casting doubt on Hindu claims to the site.


Earlier in March this year, the campus has witnessed slogans from leftist students calling for liberation from ‘Brahmanism,’ for supporting Palestine and raising contentious statements critical of the government. Videos had circulated showing students chanting, “Mile Phule-Kanshi Ram, Hawa Mein Ud Gaye Jai Shri Ram”—a slogan hearkening back to the early 1990s when the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance directly confronted Hindu nationalist slogans. In the backdrop of these chants lies the shadow of past controversies, such as the infamous 2016 protests in which slogans like “Bharat tere tukde honge” (India will be broken up) had resonated through JNU’s halls.


Why does an institution ostensibly devoted to scholarly pursuit indulge in polarizing rhetoric?


Established in the 1960s, JNU was conceived as an experimental institution - a cradle for progressive ideas that could challenge orthodoxy. Yet over time, leftist ideologies came to dominate the campus ethos. Today, many student bodies continue to believe that JNU’s role is to serve as the voice of dissent, unafraid to confront mainstream political currents. For some on campus, slogans critiquing Hindu nationalism are seen not as anti-Hindu but as anti-majoritarian, challenging a religious-political nexus viewed as a threat to India’s secularism.


JNU has produced generations of activists and scholars who see themselves as challengers of the mainstream but often fail to recognize the downright impracticality and ideological blind spots in their approach.


Their campus rhetoric hardly produces any constructive debate.

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