top of page

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.)

Want to Move Faster? Add Structure!

Scrappy can spark momentum, but only structure sustains it—clarity, not chaos, is what helps teams move faster, work smarter, and actually get ahead.

ree

A few months ago, I worked with a hospitality business in the US that ran weekend events, weddings, and overnight stays. From the outside, it looked like a fast-moving setup. But behind the scenes, things were crumbling under the pressure of repetition.


Staff schedules were juggled on WhatsApp. Tip payouts were recalculated manually every Sunday night. Bookings came in through three different tools, but no one had a clear view of the event day. Every week, it felt like they were racing to catch up.


“We’re always in motion,” the owner told me, “but never ahead of it.”

It was the business equivalent of running on a treadmill—sweating, panting, and somehow staying in the same place.


That line stuck with me—because it echoes what I hear from so many founders.


They associate speed with scrappiness. They confuse chaos with agility. But here’s the truth:

Speed doesn’t come from jugaad. It comes from clarity.


The Myth That Structure Slows You Down

Many SME founders worry that adding structure will kill creativity or momentum. “We’re a small team, we don’t need SOPs.” “Everyone already knows what to do.” “It’s faster if I just handle it myself.”


And then five minutes later, someone forgets a step, misreads an update, or proudly announces they “thought that was someone else’s job.”


But what they don’t see is the real cost of running without structure:

• Work gets redone.

• Customers fall through the cracks.

• Staff burnout.

• Founders become the single point of failure.


I’ve walked into teams that look busy on the surface—but are just solving the same problems again and again.


Structure doesn’t slow them. It frees them.


From Chaos to Cadence

That hospitality business? We didn’t bring in a big system. We didn’t hire more people. We just designed how the week should run.

• Shift planning moved to a single tool.

• Weekly pre-event checklists were created in Asana.

• Tip calculations were moved to an automated spreadsheet—with roles, hours, and thresholds built in.

• Customer follow-ups had a clear SOP: when to respond, who to tag, and how to close the loop.


Within three weeks, execution stopped depending on memory. The staff knew what was expected. The owner finally stopped waking up to emergencies.


Most importantly, the team got faster—not because they hustled harder, but because they didn’t have to think twice about every step.


Structure Is Not Bureaucracy. It’s a Shortcut.

Rahul wrote last week that change fails when it’s forced, not designed. I’d add that even well-designed change fails when the team has no structure to hold it up.


At PPS, we see this across industries. A startup struggling with project prioritisation. A logistics firm managing orders through spreadsheets. A team with new tools—but no rhythm.


In each case, the fix wasn’t dramatic. It was structural:

• A weekly decision rhythm that removed 20 back-and-forth calls

• A preconfigured template that ensured every client onboarding followed the same path

• A shared dashboard that made status updates visible—no chasing needed


When the structure is done right, it’s not rigid. It’s repeatable clarity. Clarity is what creates speed.


If you’re growing fast but still firefighting, don’t add more tools. Add more structure.


Ask yourself:

• Does my team know when to act, not just what to do?

• Is success repeatable, or dependent on memory?

• Do I trust the system—or am I the system?


Structure isn’t about slowing down. It’s how you stop dropping the ball and start gaining real momentum.


Jugaad gets you started. Structure gets you there.

Because jugaad may win the sprint—but it rarely finishes the marathon.


(The author is Co-founder at PPS Consulting and a business operations advisor. She helps businesses across sectors and geographies improve execution through global best practices. She could be reached at rashmi@ppsconsulting.biz)

Comments

bottom of page