Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I've written various posts on how to agent your agent. But I was having a chat with a dear friend of mine who was complaining that his boss waltzes into the office, riffles through everything on his desk, and quizzes him on what he's doing. He feels disrespected. In previous jobs, he had some autonomy and people assumed he knew what he's doing.

I told him that his boss probably doesn't know what he's doing. That may be his boss's fault -- his boss never takes time for a sit-down meeting -- but what he really needs to do is manage his manager.

I suggested he bombard his boss with information on what he's doing. Send lots of memos. Keep his boss constantly updated. Eventually his boss will say, "Fine, I get it, you know what you're doing, enough with the emails." But til then the boss will feel like she is being kept informed.

You have to manage the information flow with your boss. The less time they have to think about managing you, the better. For example, if you have a question or a problem, try to present it along with your best guess at the solution. That way, if you guessed right, they can say, "Yep, do that," and you're done.

Some bosses like an email with 15 points that they can go through and respond to. Some guys are prone to latch on to item 3b, give an in-depth response to that, and ignore everything else. For those guys, one question per email.

Make it as easy as possible for your boss to delegate responsibility and authority to you, and they will.

9:03 AM

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