Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Amanda Foreman for the Wall Street Journal. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Illustration credit: Alex Nabaum

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As anyone who has had the misfortune to work for a micromanager knows, success only makes the manager worse. Nor is this observation limited to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Frederick the Great of Prussia was a notorious micromanager of his generals. During the battle of Zorndorf in 1758, he shunted around his battalions like a boy playing with tin soldiers. Finally, goaded to the point of exasperation by the king’s interference, his brilliant cavalry general Friedrich von Seydlitz had the following message relayed to headquarters: “After the battle the king can do what he likes with my head, but during the battle will he please allow me to use it?”

Frederick partially relented, once he made sure that their plans for battle were essentially the same, and Seydlitz went on to achieve a decisive victory against the Russians. But the following year at Kunersdorf, poor Seydlitz was not so lucky, and Frederick insisted on sending his beloved cavalry straight into the waiting guns of the Russian artillery.

It’s notoriously difficult to get rid of a micromanager once he or she holds the reins of power. They rule without mercy, turning the minute and the mundane into weapons of war. The trick is to recognize the danger signs early on and take the appropriate preventive measures.

The history of the 20th century could have been quite different if Nicolai Lenin’s revolutionary comrades had spent five minutes reflecting on his behavior during the infamous “sealed train” journey from Switzerland to Russia in 1917.

The trouble began when Lenin was interrupted from his writing by a loud argument in the corridor. On opening his carriage door he discovered an enormous queue outside the train’s only toilet. The returning exiles had obeyed Lenin’s no-smoking-in-the-carriages directive by turning the loo into a secret cigar bar.

After expressing much irritation over his comrades’ lack of self-control, Lenin decreed that the real culprit was the age-old problem of unregulated competition for scarce resources. Only this time, it would be solved in true Soviet style. First, the needs of the masses—in this case, the smokers and the flushers—would be assessed by a Party expert, namely Lenin. Next, the Party politburo, also Lenin, would allocate the goods and services of said loo according to revolutionary party principles.

Lenin’s solution to the toilet crisis was to cut up his newspaper into strips. These were doled out as tickets: short for a flush, long for a smoke. Satisfied that order had been restored, Lenin resumed his studies in the quiet of his carriage.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Amanda Foreman is the author of the award-winning best seller, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (HarperCollins UK; Random House US), and A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided (Allen Lane UK; Random House US). She lives in New York with her husband and five children.

She is the daughter of Carl Foreman, the Oscar-winning screen writer of many film classics including The Bridge on the River Kwai, High Noon, and The Guns of Navarone. Amanda was born in London, brought up in Los Angeles, and educated in England. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University in New York. She received her doctorate in Eighteenth-Century British History from Oxford University in 1998.

In addition to regularly writing and reviewing for newspapers and magazines, Amanda Foreman has also served on a number of juries including The Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Prize and the National Book Awards. A World on Fire has been optioned by BBC Worldwide. To check out all of her WSJ articles, please click here.