When the boss isn't any good, what do you do?

There have been many times when I have thought I'd be a better boss than my own boss, which is probably one of the reasons I moved into middle management. And being a persistent bastard who just kept going for every single job internally advertised. It's a fact the more interviews you do the better you get at them and combat interview performance anxiety. However, passing an interview and doing the actual job are very different things. Further to this, you can guarantee in some organisations old adages tend to be persistent and true. The phrase "dead man's shoes" comes to mind. So it is, bosses who manage to get promoted and climb the ladder and then stay sat in their post for decades on end, may well of done great or enough to pass the interview, but as the years pass their poor decisions have likely had an ever mounting cumulative expense that climbs ever upwards.

My boss is a woman, I have no problem with this, she has been doing her job at least 25 years perhaps even 30 years, she has not moved into any other position other than the one she occupies now. Although her title may have changed and inevitably the job has changed as new working practices and IT have developed, yet she is still there. She is good at some things but catastrophic in others. Her ability to communicate and have the soft touch with staff on a one to one basis is above average and she has a sense of humour which is good. However, she is a poor decision maker in many other respects which has cost efficiency, time, work and a great deal of money.  In an example, yesterday I attended a meeting with her and three other managers. She had to raise a certain issue which another department of three different managers needed to be aware of. The meeting took one hour and during this time non of us did any work. She sat and did most of the talking and I spoke just once or twice. However the bottom line to this meeting was only two people needed to attend and it should not of been any longer than twenty minutes at most. Given her poor decision making ability and propensity to chat it seems an awful lot of expense is lost from either obstructive choices or wasted time. Which of course has never really been examined because if it was she would no longer be still sat in her chair.

My boss's boss has also been sat in his chair the same amount of time and together they have worked all these years. He comes across as someone who doesn't go out of his way to work more than he has to work. He will let his closest managers, the senior management team do the hard graft and ride the crest of a wave. He clocks in at a specific time and goes at a specific time. He keeps an eye on  finances. Due to this penny pinching trait the division is not in the best of positions. At a skeleton staff and the bones are so bare the lost or absence of any employee has a deeply bad affect on those who are left. His great plan is to allow the slow drip loss of employees and never replace them. For this probably means praise by the director of the company. When he talks of the organisation's ever improving performance in the back of my mind I want to shout liar. When I asked him directly if he expected one person to do two person's job during an job interview (and the person who left was a  talented workaholic) his reply was to say he expected the new appointee to be even better.  It is like he says things to save face and would not in any circumstances confess or agree to any kind of failure.  Perhaps he feels he must put on a brave face and try to impress everyone because of his pay grade, which is even more than an MP.  I purposely threw the interview and knew I didn't want to work directly for him and this characteristic is about hiding the truth and self importance more than any thing else.

So this still leaves me in the middle management job I do very well. At the same time knowing I am better than those who are sat above me. Knowing as and when I lose staff I am responsible for doing my best to work with what I have left even when those remaining staff members are complaining about work levels. I have always hated the fact someone else has got there before me, or I have been judged because I didn't achieve the exams grades society expected. Through my determination of self education I've reached this point here and yet I can't help still being frustrated at those who manage me for being not as good as I am, for not putting in the hours as I do, for not having the same work ethic or abilities.

In the end, the only person I need to prove myself to is myself. But I know one thing, I'm not going to overtly go out of my way to help the bosses upstairs and be their sycophant.  I have witnessed this behaviour in other managers my own grade. So I practice the soft art of keeping stoom.