"Can those people be trusted to accomplish the task in a timely manner?"

The problem isn't that people aren't accomplishing the tasks in a timely manner. It's that managers who see themselves at cogs in a machine all too often couldn't tell you what most of their people are supposed to accomplish this week.

You weren't a cog in the machine. You were a one-off, building the machine. You had discrete deliverables.

The more typical white collar worker has much more nebulous responsibilities, and are rarely the only one tasked with getting them done. Good managers know how to track this output. Bad managers track effort.

Operations, let's take call center. They've got metrics: Calls handled, avg. duration, 1st-call resolution, survey results/customer satisfaction, call-back rate, etc. You measure who's meeting standards and, for those who aren't, train to improve capabilities or go the discipline route.

Project work, you need specific deliverables and expected completion dates. Either they're delivering or they're not.

Either way, start with trust. Check in every week (ops) or two (project) and see how it's going. If you don't see what you expect, check in more often.

If it's true that 80% "need" micromanagement, is that because we've trained people to only do exactly the minimum required? When exceeding the minimum isn't rewarded, why would you expect people to do it?