I'm gonna mess this up

My boss doesn’t have the faintest freaking clue what I do all day.  He always seems astounded when I beg off assignments because I’m busier than Nathan’s hot dog chef on the 4^th of July.  Surely he must wander past my office in the middle of the morning and notice that I’m out in the plant, right?  He must read all those emails I send his way of the initiatives I’m working on and the results I’m getting.  I know he walks past my office on his way out at the end of the day and sees me in there pounding away on the keyboard.  What is he thinking?

Here’s some background on this dysfunction-in-the-making.  He’s fairly new.  He’s younger than anyone in the group who reports to him.  He wants to make headlines and continue his assault on Mt. Senior Executive.  I’ve been there a while.  I’m not quite as young as he.  I want to do my job well, have a successful team, and go home to my family at the end of the day with enough energy to shoot some hoops in the back yard.

Therein lies a problem. 

Of all the bosses I’ve ever had one in particular stands out.  He told me what he wanted, let me know what resources were available, and told me to get my backside out there and make things occur (I’m paraphrasing).  He would check back with me every once in a while to make sure I was on track, but by and large he would leave me alone.

I had another boss who helicoptered over the department and drove us all nuts.  If anything went wrong we were sure to get an email, cc’d to his boss, outlining every mistake we made in tortuous detail (even if he had made most of the decisions).  Luckily, he was soon promoted into another department.

Oh, and both bosses were eventually fired.  If my company was employment Nirvana do you think I’d be writing this blog for other middle managers (and for me, obviously)?

But back to our problem…  If the boss doesn’t know what you are doing, then she won’t appreciate you.  If you aren’t appreciated, you won’t get raises and promotions – some butt-kissing lackey will get the stuff that rightfully belongs to you.  More on those leeches in some other post…

How should I handle this little boss conundrum?

[I’ve been reading other blogs lately and I noticed that many people like to write lists.  The key idea must be in bold font.  There should be several different ideas.  Well… OK…]

1. Face to Face Communicate – I’ll admit that all seven of you probably thought of this on your own.  It’s not hard, right?  Walk into his office and say, “Hey, Boss Dude, uh, what the hell do you think I do all day, like, play solitaire?”  As most of you are aware, communication consists of a speaker and a listener.  The listener must receive the communication and comprehend the message or the communication has failed.  For example, I could tell my cat that she needs to get the hell off the dining room table, eloquently and succinctly, but she will still park her shedding hide where the salt and pepper should be.  This is a wavelength issue – and no we aren’t on the same one.  The same applies with my boss.  I’ll admit that I’m not the best communicator, but I’ll also swear that he listens like the late-model Beethoven.
2. Other Communication – Email is a godsend, but again there is a wavelength issue.  How many of you have sent a perfectly innocent note with angelic intent only to have it backfire and come back reply-to-all from Lucifer himself?  The beauty of email is that you can simply forward email from your subordinates up the chain with a simple “FYI” in the text.  This has become one of my favorite stratagems for the problem du jour, because it is quick, it gives him the same information I have, and it gives me a record that I did it (just in case he forgets, and let’s face it – if he forgets half as much as I do with my subordinates he’s doing pretty well).
3. Reports of Results – Remember the SAT?  Reports are to my boss as chocolate is to me.  I happened upon this one recently and accidentally.  One of my co-workers had been doing reports on my department (yeah, I know, dysfunctional) and he was getting all the credit that was due to the folks below me.  I put a stop to that and started doing them myself.  I also convinced one of the engineers to put his status report on powerpoint and send it to me (he had been simply telling me informally).  I didn’t see it, but they say the boss quivered with excitement when he read them. 

Does this mean I’m better off than I was?  Probably not.  You see – I’m just as stubborn and pig-headed as the next guy.  I’m dangerously passive-aggressive (ponder THAT one for a while).  The more my boss wants to know what I’m doing, the more I want to keep him from knowing.  He’s eying my turf and I don’t like it.  Why is the burden of proof on me?  Why can’t he bear some responsibility for being miserably out of touch and ignorant?  How can it be that he is always right because he is the boss?  He’s not &$^%^#% right!  He’s an idiot.  Why do I have to put up with this crap?

Sorry – had to take my pills – feel better now.

One of the supervisors who reports to me makes sure that I know in excruciating detail every aspect of his working existence.  It’s useful to me, mostly, but it also wastes my time because it tempts me to get involved in things that shouldn’t require my energy.  He even invites me to poop in his helmet all the time; sometimes I resist the urge but often he insists and I have to wriggle off the hook.  I know what he’s doing (sometimes I’m doing it for him) and thus I’m “informed”.  But it costs me.

My boss, on the other hand, is at the other end of the spectrum.  He gets a few emails from me, mostly FYIs.  I rarely seek his input because I already know what to do and I do not want him leaving me gifts in my helmet. 

Since this is a do as I say and not as I do kind of thing, let me tell you this: manage your manager.   Ask for feedback on their preferences for information, both in content and in medium.  Even if they tell you they like email, watch them closely.  I’ve noticed that they often don’t know what the hell they want until they get too much of what they don’t want.  If you have a micro-manager, prepare to spend a lot of time feeding the dragon.  If you don’t delegate well you will soon be one miserable SOB.  Consider counseling.  Ask your HR department if divorce lawyers are one of the benefits they provide.

Bottom line – don’t ask me.  I’ve already screwed this one all to hell.  Sorry.