Tell Your Boss Where to Go This Year

My resolution this year is to tell my boss where to go. Not only am I planning to tell my boss where to go; I expect him to thank me for doing it.

Every year most of us go to work day after day, and do the things our boss asks us to do. Our boss makes decisions, sometimes thoughtful and practical, but often arbitrary and contrary to our own common sense. For our part we provide at least partial compliance, and complain to our peers in the hallway, and our partners at home, about the latest misguided directive from above. Well, rather than enduring another year of working to the whims of management, this year I suggest you start telling your boss where to go.

Perhaps the strongest misconception people hold onto about their managers is that they should be handing you a task list and prioritizing it for you. This is the model for entry level staff. If you are new to the job, or new to being a manager then you may expect some period of time where your management team directs your activities on a daily or weekly basis. But if you ever hope to move beyond that position, to a place where people look to you as a leader of the organization you cannot wait for your manager to always tell you what to do, and you cannot go on always telling every member of your team what to do. There is a term for this: micro-management. There are times when it is called for, but if this is your normal mode of operation then you can expect to stay exactly where you are for the rest of your career. Micro-management is one of the least effective long term leadership strategies there is. Strong leaders create teams of productive people. Their objective is to set direction and delegate both responsibility and authority to the strong leaders around them. Consider this management progression chart showing the evolution of a manager from entry level to business leader.

As managers progress though the four stages they move from left to right on the chart from needing to be supervised or monitored closely, to being capable of having things delegated to them with little or no supervision. Obviously your manager would like you to move from left to right as quickly as possible, because delegating takes up a lot less of their time than monitoring and supervising does. In short, it is more productive for them. As a first stage, new manager you need to be given direction and supervised. “Customer X has a problem with Product Y. It sounds like something we need to address. Get Hank and Mary in a room and try to define the problem and brainstorm possible solutions. Let me know what you come up with tomorrow.” The new manager will pull the team together and coordinate, but their boss probably told them what the problem is, what the next steps are, and when he wants a status update. You have been directed to a specific task, and your boss plans to monitor progress closely.

If we look at the same problem after you have progressed to the level of intermediate manager you don’t need to be given as much direction, but instead need encouragement to help build your confidence and move you to the next level. “Customer X has a problem with Product Y. I know you can handle this. Let me know what you come up with tomorrow.” Same problem, but instead of being directed to the next step, you are encouraged with statements of confidence in your ability to handle the situation. The plan is still monitored closely, not only so your boss can keep and eye on it, but also so he has plenty of opportunity to encourage you by saying “great job, I knew you could handle it.” This is where you will first see your manager start letting go of the reigns and letting you handle things your way.

Let’s move on to the senior manager. “Customer X has a problem with Product Y. I need you to handle this because I need someone I know will follow through” Same problem and still a lot of encouragement related to your boss’s faith in your ability. What’s different is that you are no longer asked for status updates. A good boss trusts the Senior Manager to handle the situation, and update him as required. At this stage you have crossed a very important threshold where the boss no longer needs to pull information from you. They can rely on you to push information their way in an appropriate manner. You can start to see how this drives towards productivity. Instead of regular progress meetings, you are now in the land of on demand, as required progress updates which are much more efficient. You may well still need to be having regular update meetings with your team, but you have grown to a level that no longer requires this level of micro-management.

And finally we get to the business leader. “Customer X has a problem…” at which point you interrupt your boss to say “I’ll take care of it”, and you do. Your boss may never even hear the resolution to this problem until you’re shooting the breeze over the coffee pot one day, and he asks more out of curiosity than concern, “Hey whatever happened to that thing with Customer X?”, “Oh, Mary took care of that weeks ago, there was some confusion over how to correctly apply the product, we talked them through it and we’re updating the documents to make it more clear”. The level of encouragement is no longer required, and we move back towards directing mode. The directives however have changed in scope. With the new manager the directive was fix this problem for this customer. For the business leader it becomes take care of this customer, or this region, or this business unit. The business leader does not wait to be told what to do, he understands his objectives, sets the direction, and tells his boss what direction to go.

So this year whether you want to move up in the organization, or just be the best at what you do now, make a positive change and start telling your boss where to go instead of waiting for him to tell you