Better to Micromanage Than to Disengage
The opposite of micromanagement is not empowerment it is often neglect. When you cannot find genuine energy for your work, staying engaged through over-involvement beats disappearing entirely.
"It's better to micromanage a bit than to disappear, and micromanagement will leave you far better prepared to engage with whatever new problem comes your way." Will Larson
Will Larson identifies three reasons managers become disengaged: external demands break their work systems, pursuit of "enlightened distance" goes too far and becomes neglect, or they start chasing energy elsewhere. The second category is particularly insidious. A manager who tells their team "I trust you" and then ignores them is not empowering the team they are abandoning it. The third is the hardest to fix: executives who become active angel investors or chase side projects because their core work no longer provides flow.
The flow state framework explains why disengagement happens. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi showed that flow requires a challenge matched to your skill level. An expert doing rote work gets bored. A beginner facing extreme difficulty gets anxious. When executives find their role either too easy or too hard, they drift toward whatever gives them energy, even if it means their team suffers. The standard advice is to assign more work, but Larson argues this misses the diagnosis: executives disengage because they subtly believe that doing better does not matter much. The fix is not more work but more attention making sure they know their work is seen and valued.
The practical prescription is to deliberately engage for a month: push into details enough to ensure the chain of attention flows downward. Micromanage just a bit. It keeps you informed, keeps your team supported, and keeps you ready for the next real challenge. Every role has dry spells, and the measure of a leader is whether they stay present through them.
Takeaway: When you cannot find energy in your work, lean into the details rather than stepping away your team needs your presence more than your enthusiasm.
See also: Design Systems That Make Success Easy | Senior Engineers Need More Than Code | Efficiency Is The Enemy of Resilience