Dealing with an Unorganized Boss III

Bosses who don’t communicate

Many managers with no previous leadership experience are poor communicators.  This isn’t surprising, because the communication skills required to be a good manager are generally only learned through experience.

One common situation you’ll find yourself encountering under this type of person is working on a team of people who are out of sync. For example, your boss may tell you about an important upcoming project, but no one else hears about it until the last minute.  On the other hand, you may also find yourself in a position where everyone else knows some crucial piece of information except you.

The best solution is for your boss to learn how to communicate as a leader.  You can try to encourage them to communicate better by suggesting weekly meetings, memos to the whole team, etc. However, if you can’t change your boss, here are some things that might help improve the situation.

• Create a group email address for the whole team.  Sometimes, giving your boss a mechanism to communicate with everyone just as simply as communicating with an individual, will help improve the communication.
• Notify everyone on your team of critical information.  Don’t assume that your boss will tell people what they need to know.  This can be a simple matter of summarizing what your boss has told you and emailing it to the entire team, including your boss.  Your boss then has an opportunity to clarify themselves if you misunderstood something or they changed their mind.
• Create informal weekly meetings with your coworkers to go over anything important.  Obviously, it is better if your boss is driving these, but even if it is just you and a few co-workers, a few minutes spent communicating can save you hours of work later on.

Other posts on dealing with an unorganized boss:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Originally published on December 18, 2005.

Dealing with an Unorganized Boss II

Bosses who contradict themselves.

This can be a really annoying type of person to work for.  In mild forms, it just seems like they are slightly confused.  In really bad situations, these bosses seem totally deranged and malicious.  If you have a boss who will tell you to drop everything and work on X and then come back and ask why you aren’t working on Y, you are dealing with one of these bosses.

In most cases, these types of people aren’t outright malicious; they just have a very short memory, no clear goals, and are very unorganized.  You can usually improve the situation by putting their statements in writing.  For example, if your boss comes in and asks you to drop everything and work on X, write it on your whiteboard while they are there watching.  For bigger items, you might follow up with a memo or email.

In some cases, you might want to draft their instructions and get them to sign off on it.  Obviously, this is only worth while if it is something substantial, but having a plan or procedure that your boss has signed off on can be a powerful tool for you.  Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean your boss can’t ever change something.  You just want to make sure that when they make a change, they realize they are making a change.

Generally, you don’t want to be heavy handed about pointing out that your boss is contradicting him/herself.  Don’t beat them over the head with what they said previously, but just casually mention their previous position or directions as part of clarifying what that are saying currently. For example, if your boss gives you one procedure on Monday and comes in Tuesday with a different procedure, saying something like “OK, so does this replace the process (pulling out your notes or summary email you wrote) you gave me yesterday or is this a one time process?”  This isn’t confrontational and asks a legitimate question that will help gently point out to your boss that they are contradicting themselves.

In some cases you may need a little more leverage to help encourage your boss to stick with their decisions.  You can do this by making your boss’s decisions public.  This only works on decisions that impact more than just yourself.  It isn’t going to help you to broadcast every task your boss asks you to do. However, things that impact more than just one or two people are perfect for this treatment.  You follow the same type of procedure as above to write a summary of your boss’s directions.  Once your boss has agreed with them, distribute them to other people that they impact.  Better yet ask your boss to distribute them.  You might email your boss with your summary and say something like “This is the new policy as I understand it.  It might be helpful if you sent it out to the whole team so we are all on the same page.  Please edit or modify anything that I may not have gotten right.”

Your boss gets to look organized (for once) by actually putting something in writing and it makes it much more difficult to change their mind because “everyone” knows what they said.  If nothing else, it makes it much more difficult for them to forget.

If your boss is truly deranged and malicious, none of these techniques will work, but you may be able to use them as a litmus test to see if there is hope or if you should consider moving on to a less erratic work environment.

Other posts on dealing with an unorganized boss:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Originally published on December 14, 2005.

Dealing with an Unorganized Boss

In the last few months, I’ve spoken with several people who are having a difficult time working with their boss.  In each case, the boss isn’t a bad person, but they are so unorganized that it is difficult to get much done under their leadership.  Obviously, the fault lies with the boss.  However, for people who are used to being highly productive, knowing where to place the blame offers little consolation.

This is the first in a series of posts listing common problems you’ll face with an unorganized supervisor and some suggestions on how to best deal with them.

The boss who doesn’t know what needs to be done.

This happens in two different forms. Some bosses know exactly what
they need to do, but aren’t really sure what they should have you work
on. Other bosses aren’t really clear on what they should be doing
(which of course means they have even less of a clue as to what you
should be working on).

If you find yourself in this situation, you’ll need to direct most of
your work yourself. However, you still need to keep your boss informed
and make sure that they approve what you are doing. Otherwise, you run
the risk of having them change your goals once you get started.

One way to do this is to make a list of everything you know needs to
be done and ask them to tell you what they would like you to work on.
This puts them in the position of feeling like they are managing you,
which means they are more likely to defend what you are working on if
it ever comes into question. Also, since you have their buy-in, they are
less likely to come in later and change what you are working on.

It is very important to make sure that any direction they give you
is documented. Most unorganized bosses will never put anything in
writing, so if you have a face to face meeting with them where say you
should be working on X and Y, don’t assume that they will remember that
conversation later. Be proactive by following up your conversation with
a short email summarizing your conversation. This gives you a record of
what you’ve been told to do and gives them a chance to clarify anything
that you may have misunderstood. If your boss later asks you why you
are doing something, you can refer back to your email that summarized
the meeting.

Other posts on dealing with an unorganized boss:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Originally published on December 13 2005.

Working From Home

With the increase in gasoline costs, now my be the perfect time to talk to your boss about working from home one or two days per week.  Checkout our guide that shows you how to approach your boss about a work-from-home arrangement.