Would you please set up a meeting? 2

[ivymike]

Maybe this is more of a rant than a question... but I'm sure there must be a few out there who can relate.

Boss got cc'd on an email last week, along with various other managers, talking about some voice-of-customer (VOC) questions that need to be answered to help make decisions on a particular project. Boss forwards the email to me and asks me to set up a meeting with key people to talk about what we're doing to answer the questions.

I set up the meeting, using the following as the meeting description:

Objective: Identify outstanding VOC items and plan to obtain info
Known items:
- item 1
- item 2
..etc

We had the meeting today, first ten minutes were spent by my boss criticizing me in front of the group. He didn't like the format of the meeting invitation, because it wasn't clear. He wanted to know what my objective was in holding the meeting, what the purpose of the meeting was, and what I thought the answers should be for each of the listed items. He also wanted to see the items listed in a question/answer format instead of a bulleted list.

wtf?

 

[IRstuff]

Sounds like it's time to get a new boss...

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[YoungTurk]

Sounds like a setup.

He wanted to blast you on the topic du jour but needed it to be in front of the "key people" so as to get/keep himself out of the blame.

Obviously, he couldn't call the meeting himself and then blast you, that just woudln't be couth.

 

[ewh]

For me that ranks up there with managers that do not want to hear of any problems whatsoever unless a solution is also presented, and then nothing is done to implement said solution. Needless to say, they never heard of many problems.

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

And how did he react when you reminded him ... also in front of the group ... that the objective of holding the meeting was to satisfy his email request to do so?

 

[SomptingGuy]

"what I thought the answers should be for each of the listed items"

So the meeting wasn't to discuss, understand and possibly solve problems, it was to announce pre-thought solutions.

- Steve

 

[ivymike]

I said "the objective of this meeting is to 'Identify outstanding VOC items and plan to obtain info'" when he asked what the objective was. I was a bit too worn down by earlier meetings to bother putting up much resistance, and I just sat there quietly while he picked apart the rest of it. When he finished I just started in on the list... "so, the first item we need to find out about is..."

 

[ivymike]

I still haven't found a way to get a different boss and equal/greater pay without moving. Moving is something I'm trying to avoid... at seemingly ever-greater expense of my satisfaction at work. I've actually seriously considered going after jobs with a 30% pay cut in the same area, just for a change of scenery (who knows if the grass is really any greener).

 

[jmw]

VOC: "Voice of Customer" says it all.
Anyone that addicted to Management jargon isn't playing with a full deck.

Customer Queries.
Customer Complaints.

That ought to be good enough for most people so what's with this "Voice of Customer" BS?

I can't imagine your peers as anything but in sympathy with you, especially as they all apparently saw the same email and knew what was expected.

And as a manager, he already did most of it anyway; he emailed everyone saying he wanted a meeting to discuss VOC.

If the VOCs are tabulated, then the job is done. What more does he want?

If he couldn't get answers to the VOC from the email then presumably this would be a heads of department meeting to assign tasks and set a new meeting date at which the solutions would be discussed. None of it requires the meeting to be a surprise party nor does it require much in the way of an agenda.

First meeting they all should come to it all knowing the VOC questions.
Second meeting they come to it all knowing the proposed solutions.
Hopefully the troops will have suggested some alternative solutions so that at the second meeting the big boss can make some decisions and not just rubber stamp what his troops have decided. They feel more important that way.

Job done.

Best is to hope he will soon be lead away in a straight-jacket.

After seeing so many bad mangers striving to attain new depths of bad management I begin to warm to the corrupt police concept of fitting people up who are guilty of something anyway, and getting them canned.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Latexman]

I see it a little different. He asked you to do something. You did it. In front of his team, he felt threatened, so he flexed his muscle to take back the power (power struggle). He tried to make you look like an ass, but only succeeded in looking like an ass himself.

Good luck,
Latexman

 

[casseopeia]

Sounds like your boss was expecting answers, not questions. Was he getting pressure from another source and just looking to dispense with the problem? And forwarding an emal to you was the most expedient thing he could do while his golf buddy teed off.

Next time have a pre-meeting and come up with the solutions presented in a nicely-formatted document using lots of pretty charts and give it to the boss at the BIG meeting, saying, "Here ya go, asshat."

But then I'm not usually a good person to come up with the most diplomatic solution....

"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump

 

[jmw]

See here, first example:

http://www.bnet.com/blog/salesmachine/how-to-cope-with-a-horrible-boss/16790?promo=713&tag=nl.e713

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[bigTomHanks]

Sounds like you handled the situation fairly well given the circumstances. Hopefully you did not show any noticable signs of being thrown off guard, this will make your boss furious. You don't have to try to one up someone like that but if you do hold your ground and have a freaking backbone then you will come out the winner. Everyone knows your boss is a jerk if he is doing stuff like that and will seceretly respect you for handling it well.

 

[Ron]

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED!!

 

[patprimmer]

The more unreasonable he gets, the cooler you need to be. I know you are open and emotional so that will be hard. Just think of it as a game he is playing and roll gently with the punches. Do not show anger or frustration. Feign confusion and ask for guidance, IN WRITING so you can be sure to have time to be sure your interpretation is in accord with is meaning.

Reply to such documents with your interpretation and intended actions and ask if that is what he wanted. Always use respectful sounding language.

If you don't get rattled and just keep returning serve so to speak, he will either explode in a self destructive way or just give up and look for easier targets to bully. Don't play for the winner, just keep returning defensively until he makes the mistake.

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376 for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &

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[casseopeia]

jmw, great article! I'm going to try some of that.

"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump

 

[ctopher]

I don't get along much with bosses like that.

At one company I worked at several years ago, my boss went on a week vacation. As he was walking out the door, he asked me to sit in for him on Monday's meeting. He said "just take notes".
I had a major aerospace company show up on Monday for an audit.
They wanted to know everything how the business worked, and what my boss did.
I said he sits here at his desk and types 8 hrs a day, with an occasional female ranting about personal stuff.

I got an earful when he returned. I didn't care.

If your is vague what he/she wants, they should expect more than what was bargained.

Chris
SolidWorks 10 SP5.0
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[jmw]

You're welcome Cass.

I sometimes forget how many of us have bad bosses and I shouldn't considering how few good bosses are.
But not all bad bosses are un-manageable nor are they all abusive tyrants.

We had a shouter once. He loved nothing better than to pick on someone at a meeting and devote ten or fifteen minutes to trying to break them. Oh sure, he'd have a reason, but not one that ever warranted more than a quiet word or a gentle hint.

And then, one day, he wasn't there any more (health problems we were told) and we had a new boss, one of only two or three really good ones I've come across in my career.

He didn't last long at all.
His talents were recognised and he was fast tracked out of our backwater company into the corporate mainstream where he could rise to the higher levels of management.

In a way, having a good boss, even if only briefly, is bad for you because it shows what life could be like and it is often your only real chance to discover and show what you are capable of.

It shows that the natural selection processes within large companies draw up good managers from the silt of middle management and leaves the dross behind.

Bad doesn't necessarily mean tough on their staff, abusive, playing favourites etc. It can simply mean they aren't that good at their jobs.
They don't shine and they don't exactly take the business anywhere. It means that however good you are, you aren't likely to go far either because you won't get a chance to really shine and won't be recognised if you do.

But that's why such companies have management handbooks.

With most managers, the troops are usually able to get on and do their work. Of course, with such managers, the work will not be as organised and structured and may not be as good as it could be, but in most cases it allows the company to survive because every other company is the same.

But if you ever get a really good boss, you'll know the difference.

So it is everyone's lot to work for bad bosses, some are better than others and some will let you get on with stuff and others, a few, will make life miserable.

So the way it works is that some people will become managers. If they are any damn good they will go on to be senior managers. If they are not, they will usually stay where they are.
They have to be pretty damn bad to be canned or transferred sideways.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[IRstuff]

I don't think I've ever had a direct boss that was that bad. I've had bosses that mostly shielded me from their bad bosses:
> The shouter, oddly, I've also known one; he went on a tirade against my boss in front of me. After nearly an hour, he slowed down enough for my boss to find out that the tirade was about a late weekly report.

> Same boss just LOVED the sound of his own voice, apparently. He had 3pm staff meetings, and once, I got a call from my boss around 8pm, telling me that he had just gotten out of the staff meeting. Same boss didn't want to end the staff meeting early, on the day of the Rodney King riots, even though we were smack in the middle of Hawthorne, and a fellow coworker had gotten shot just 1 block away.

> The GM that was proud of saving on the utility bill by putting timers on all the copiers. The fact that we burned contract dollars waiting for the dame things to warm up was apparently irrelevant, particularly since he got a bonus for the utility bill savings.

> The GM that refused to recall a military processor, until forced to by a GIDEP alert. A definite bottomliner (bottomfeeder) who got promoted once our division showed a profit. While he's the sleaziest GM I've had, he's the most interesting, primarily because he was one of the few people in management that truly understood his place in the world, and what was expected of him.

> The GM that loved to solve DiffEqs and attend technical meetings and discuss detailed technical subjects. Sounds good, right? However, he was so enamored with technology and technical matters that he forgot to mind the store, and lost his division to someone else in a division merger.

> Countless managers that would slave away from 7:30am to after 8pm, because they loved to do technical work, and couldn't let go.


TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[SNORGY]

Holy carp!

(Yes...the fish...or whatever...)

The last "boss" that did something like that to me, I just took it and then approached him off-line in his office, where I said:

"Listen, you stupid .... if you ever set me up like that again in a grandstanding fashion in a forum of my peers and clients, I will pitch you out of your office window so that you can hit the sidewalk like manure from a tall horse."

It hasn't happened since.

But that's just me.


Regards,

SNORGY.