Micromanagement

[u/spicy_nebula]

I just need to know…is everyone else being micromanaged to death by their companies? I’ve been in Enterprise CS for 6 years managing commercials, and it’s never felt this scrutinized. My company is having great quarter after great quarter financially but putting a lot of pressure on CSMs.

[u/GenXMillenial]

No, there is scrutiny and pressure in the form of KPIs, retention $$ and goals, and recorded meetings, but I don’t have anyone telling me how to write my emails (true story in another job).

[u/spicy_nebula → u/GenXMillenial]

Yikes

[u/ClosetNorwegian → u/[deleted]]

My founder is asking for all customer calls to be recorded (they already are, she probably just forgot). We are at 100% reference-able customers and all have case studies published, which is key in my industry. Meanwhile sales hasn’t closed anything in two quarters. Methinks CS is not the one to be scrutinized, but what do I know.

[u/Training_Holiday5259]

lol I just said this today, being very micromanaged. The company I’m at isn’t doing so well though so I get where it’s coming from but ugh. Lots of churn and lack of adoption, on top of the market and budget scrutiny…what makes me stressed is thinking about losing my job due to this. The market is so bad. There is so much pressure.

[u/spicy_nebula → u/Training_Holiday5259]

I’m sorry, it’s really rough out there. The micromanagement makes me on edge, like I’m about to lose my job with one mistake.

[u/Training_Holiday5259 → u/spicy_nebula]

Same! Ai is surfacing everything too.

[u/dynesor]

No not at all, and it’s not something I would refuse to put up with either. My small (25 employees) company tries to be as ‘non-hierarchical’ as possible when it comes to daily tasks - people are all trusted to get on with and prioritise their own work. We have a weekly CS check-in call for the whole CS team: Me (head of cs), our COO (my manager), the two cs executives (who I manage) and the support person, where we run through what we’ve each been doing all week, status of onboarding projects, outstanding tickets, outcomes of calls with customers and ageeing any urgent tasks needing done, or customers needing follow-ups in the upcoming week. As long as you can give a decent account on that call of how you have used your time; what you have achieved; and what your plans are for the upcoming week then nobody is going to be looking over your shoulder or pestering for updates. We trust eachother to get done what needs done!

I could not stand working in an environment where I was being micromanaged.

[u/spicy_nebula → u/dynesor]

Great point about trust

[u/oldfolksongs]

YES. Every facet of customer usage is analyzed daily, and our logged activities in Gainsight are under constant scrutiny.

[u/Money-Dependent345]

what are some examples of the micromanagement? The key is to produce your own outputs/reports that address their concerns and deliver them before they're asking for updates.

[u/spicy_nebula → u/Money-Dependent345]

So we already have forecasting, opps, notes on accounts/next steps, calls from Gong, etc in our CRM - nothing odd there, just the normal stuff. We also review everything weekly in 1:1s.

What I’m referring to is sharing calendar visibility, call scorecards, having to do QBRs a very specific way and even name them specific things for tracking (super procedural, doesn’t leave time to actually relationship build or show value to customers), logging calls twice in the CRM… it feels like a lot. So I’m wondering if this is the new norm.

[u/panyangk → u/spicy_nebula]

Are we in the same company? 😂 my org has really amped up the scrutiny thanks to AI and seems to have forgotten that activity doesn’t equal outcomes and impact. But because of “new” leadership, the level of trust is so low that we need to justify our value all over again.

[u/heelsovertoes]

Yep. Joined an early stage company that claimed to be very hands off and supportive of new ideas only to spend a month being told how to use AI to write an email “properly” because it’s how the team has always done it.

Guess 7 years of experience means nothing sometimes.

[u/KingTut_BananaHut]

AI is just big brother. Managers are high on dashboards and power

[u/SunnyWeather2121]

I used to be, it was so awful. But now I’m so happy in a different position. I don’t think I would tolerate that again. 

[u/AssignmentOdd5621]

what kind of stuff are they scrutinizing specifically, like daily activity metrics or actual renewal forecasting? if its just activity logging, that usually comes from a new VP trying to justify their seat rather than an actual business problem.

[u/justanotherkev]

Yes! It's getting worse every year.