How to deal with a distracted manager

July 5, 2013 12:44 AM

Surprisingly Google doesn't show up much on this topic. How do you deal with a distracted manager who always seems to have 10,000 things at once?

My new boss is a very distracted sort of person. Only on the fourth or fifth attempt did I manage to successfully organise a meeting with him, and even though I asked him directly what projects I need to work on, what bits of those projects I need to work on, and when I need to have them done by, he was very flighty and distracted and frankly, quite a short attention span. How can I get him to focus?

posted by glache to Work & Money (14 answers total)

Unless he manages his workflow better, then this will be tough.

The issue is variously:

- Poor time management
- Not giving proper attention to his managees
- Not delegating properly

Now, he may be very busy. In which case, sit down with him and ask him to delegate more responsibility to you. This will give you the freedom to work more autonomously.

Aside that, I'd suggest you take the running on booking in time with him. But often this fails because all that happens is that scheduled meetings are cancelled, postponed etc.

I'd sit down with him and discuss your concerns. Pitch them as a problem for him, not you. Your goal is to get him to realise that either you need him to delegate more to you so you can work without as regular catch ups, or you need regular scheduled meetings so you can work efficiently for him. You may get excuses, or vague promises. Ask him clearly what needs to happen for these meetings to happen when you want.

It is possible these meetings need to be shorter. Or that they need an agenda in advance. Or they need to be on a certain day, or a certain time. Get the agreement that they need to happen, or else the autonomy to work without them happening. It's that binary. This is basically coaching up. You achieve it by asking questions: what needs to happen, how can we make this work, what time can he commit to etc etc. It is a way of taking someone down a decision path but, because you're not telling them what to do, they own the decision and in a boss/managee relationship it preserves the hierarchy.

FWIW, I've been in a version of this issue as the boss. 14 hours days. No time for anyone. Utterly snowed under. It is incredibly self-defeating. My approach was to take a very different approach: I delegated furiously, focused a lot of my energies on coaching my managees, kept meetings short but sacresanct. My workload actually fell, because of the delegation and empowerment. My team loved it because they developed more quickly and got more responsibility. It's a win-win when done correctly.
posted by MuffinMan at 1:04 AM on July 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

who always seems to have 10,000 things at once?

Work some regular meetings into his schedule. He will give you his full attention for X minutes at X o'clock every day over coffee. Very short, focused meetings every day whether he likes it or not. Gently twist his arm. If he has a weakness for snacks or smokes or something, try to turn it into a chance for him to indulge his weakness while you talk. Then he looks forward to your meetings.

And if you have the time, take over more and more of his tasks. He will thank you for it (perhaps monetarily come evaluation and raise time), he will be able to focus more on what he has left to do. When you take over a task from him, make sure you work out a very clear way to give him the status of the task so he can report it up to his boss as needed. When he gets kicked upstairs, you'll take over his current job and do it better than he does.
posted by pracowity at 1:18 AM on July 5, 2013

I hate to say it, but I'm that sort of boss when I have to manage people. Of course, the reason I'm distracted is that I can't trust my managees to do anything right enough to delegate serious responsibility to them, and my boss will not get rid of them despite my repeated entreaties. That's a problem for own AskMeFi question, of course, but it sets the basis for my minor suggestions here.

If you know what you have to do or have a good idea what you need to do, plan that out ahead of time, and then go present that to your manager. It might be a project you need to work on, or it might just be your planned tasks for a few days going forward. Your boss will hopefully appreciate that you're actively thinking about and planning what you need to do. I'm not at all saying that you're this type, but it's incredibly frustrating having someone constantly bug you for their next minor little assignment. You make your plan, present it to him, and he either okays it or makes minor adjustments to it quickly. It uses his time more efficiently, which he'll appreciate as opposed to long drawn-out wandering discussions.

If you think that you taking on more responsibility will help to ease some of your manager's workload, please make sure that you can actually handle that additional responsibility. Make a clear case to your boss what you think you can help with. Most importantly, once you've executed your new responsibilities, make sure that you can clearly explain what it is you did that helped and why it was done right. It's not comforting at all when someone comes to me and simply says "I'm done with xyz. What should I do next?" and can't make the case that they did xyz right and should move on. In fact, it usually makes my load get heavier as I start worrying I need to check their work.

If you're boss clearly understands that you want to help and then can actually see that you are, he's going to appreciate that immensely since it will take a real load off of him. It'll help your position and he'll probably trust you more and you'll have an easier time getting to talk to him.

In terms of getting ahold of him when he keeps missing meetings with you, I often have my employees email me even when they're right down the hall. My email is always open on my computer screen, and I bet his is, too. In the email, efficiently lay out the same things I've said above. It'll be in his Inbox so he won't lose it or forget about it, and that message will get to him even if his door is closed.
posted by KinoAndHermes at 1:43 AM on July 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think you may be expecting too much. You just had a meeting (that you were a bit concerned about) with your boss after a work trip a couple of weeks ago. It may be that your boss expects you to do whatever it is that your daily job duties are and not need to be told exactly what to do at such a micro-management level.
posted by xingcat at 3:22 AM on July 5, 2013

Seconding that email might work better.

It might help if you describe what you think your manager expects from you, how you plan to go about with projects, etc. and then asking specific questions: are you happy with me completing this part by Friday, and the whole thing by next month?
It's worth asking what kind of feedback on what you've been doing he wants from you. Some people just don't want to know about what's going on unless something's wrong and they need to take decisions.

You can also check in with your manager regularly via email just to sum up what you've been doing: this is done, this will be done by tomorrow, this was not done because I'm waiting up on someone, that sort of thing. In my experience that helps with distracted managers who might forget you told them something in person. I get this from one my bosses sometimes and having an email or a note as proof prevents misunderstandings.

Also, your manager might not be aware of everything you do, so telling him in writing can help him manage you better. I did this when one of my bosses assumed without asking me I would be taking on an additional project which was gonna push my workload beyond what was reasonable. I described my workload in an email, in a nice - thanks for all the responsibility, it's great! - kind of way, but then explained this was all I could take on at present. The boss got it, because he didn't actually know all the other things I did around the office, and delegated stuff to others.
For you, it might be that doing this helps the manager delegate additional tasks to you (you can suggest, e.g. that since you do x, also doing y makes sense). This will make his workload lighter and your prospects brighter come evaluation/raise time.
posted by mkdirusername at 4:24 AM on July 5, 2013

Not sure if this applies to your situation or not, but: I once had a boss -- let's call him Ernest -- who was extremely busy (not just distracted - he really did have too much on his plate). He would get billions of emails a day, and at one point it seemed like he basically just started not responding to questions raised in them. This was especially true in emails that were between several people in the department besides him. I was guessing that he would just see "There are a bunch of people on this, I'm sure they've got it covered", and never even noticed that, say, the ninth paragraph said "I think this next issue is something that Ernest has to make a decision on".

So, whenever I sent him a message that I really needed a response from him for, I took to making sure to make the subject line something like "Ernest, there's an issue with the (blah blah blah)" or "Ernest, what do you want to do about (blah blah blah)".

In my nonscientific review of the results, it seemed to help (although not always).
posted by Flunkie at 5:17 AM on July 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Your manager probably thinks you are not his biggest problem, and that means keep doing what you are doing. Managers have too much to do; they attend to what needs fixing and it isn't you.

If he is doing his job right, and you know what you are doing, he will be too vague and his guidance will be a bit too little for you. Skillfully manage the disconnect yourself; it is called managing upward. He is extending you trust.

Manage upward by being the solid reliable producer and going after problems on your own; if your manager is doing things right he will appreciate it and you should see that in your reviews.
posted by jet_silver at 5:24 AM on July 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I had this problem. (1,800 unread emails. Really?) Sending an email did NOT work with this guy.

I guess it depends on his personality type.

The way I dealt with it was to "work around" him when I could. Others who were sick of him being a bottleneck appreciated it, although he might see this as "going over their head".

If I absolutely needed him to do something for me, or make a decision, I'd slide up a chair beside him when he was at his desk and ask him if he had a moment, and wait for him to "just finish this important email", then I'd have his undivided attention for a few minutes. Then, chase up with him in the same way about when he would do the thing I'd asked of him. Repeat as necessary.

This guy was overall an incredibly nice guy, and always wanting to help, but very poor at time management and prioritisation.
posted by Diag at 5:35 AM on July 5, 2013

What Diag said. Physically stopping him in the hall was literally the only way I could get any face time. My co-workers were on alert for me- "Code Red! Boss is in the bathroom!" I'd hang outside the door so as to appear casually walking by when he emerged, and ask my question as he walked to the next meeting or wherever. That sort of crap.

I had to institute this type of thing: I would exhaustively document in an email (and CC a few others "as witnesses") what I planned to do (absent any direction from him):
"Please let me know if these action items/deliverables/next steps don't match up with what you would advise. See attached for more information. I plan to start on Item X first thing tomorrow, Tuesday 7/2/13." (Item X being the one least likely to generate any issues or questions.) I attached as many documents as were required to support my plan.

Then I would put a read receipt on it, print 2 copies, then send it. (The goal being to have a record in case he claimed to not have been made aware of what I was working on.)

I would place a bright-colored post-it on one of the printouts, on which I had written, "Stop by if you have any questions! :-) - I_Love-Bananas," ext. 1234 and place it on his chair.

Then I would just start working on the things I had written in the email. When I needed a direct question answered or a specific obstacle removed (which was, luckily, rarely), I would resort to the method described above. Over time he started to rely on my "reports" and pretty much left me to my own devices. Before I left that assignment he actually thanked me for providing such detailed information on my work.

I think part of his issue was that he wasn't just a manager, he had his own set of work responsibilities that overtook him and the tasks related to truly managing others became secondary. Just because someone excels at their position doesn't necessarily mean he/she is cut out to manage others... my boss didn't know how to be a manager or really even want to be one.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 6:19 AM on July 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Be very organized. Instead of asking what projects Boss wants you to work on, think of the projects you prefer, and say to Boss, I'd like to do X and Y on A and B, and here's a brief plan of what I'll do and how long it will take. That's how my co-workers cherry-pick projects. You're basically delegating work to yourself. Send concise weekly email updates. Never meet with Boss without a list. Find ways to help Boss gets stuff done.
posted by theora55 at 8:25 AM on July 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

On email and communication generally.

Is this guy is getting tons of emails, then he needs to filter. The biggest problem my team and the wider organisation had was that when things got busy, you got cc'ed on everything and a lot of the time your particular actions (Bob will...) got buried in the email.

Solutions:

- Cut down on email. Get your coworkers to cut down on email.

- Move your team/group project to social media and take all group conversations away from point to point and onto social media. If you use Salesforce.com then its built in app Chatter is brilliant. If not, then Yammer is a good substitute.

- Put your actions in the email. Title the email so it has a call to action. If you need an action then put "ACTION" in the title. If you need a decision, put "DECISION" in the title. You need to do this selectively, and make sure it doesn't come across as passive aggressive. But speaking as someone who used to get 200 emails a day, without your correspondents flagging what is signal and what is noise all you end up doing is skimming inbound emails on your blackberry and triaging by who or what is important.

- Put what you want at the top of the email. Don't write a long email and end with "and therefore I need x" start with: "Summary: Project X is completing; I need another project. Options Y & Z" etc. Ideally, don't write long emails at all.

- If you're not doing it already, then produce an end of week or end of month summary. Bring everything you want into one place - what you've done, successes, failures, next steps, decision points. That way your boss isn't having to rely on going back through a bunch of emails to make sense of stuff. Honestly, it's a killer having people communicate piecemeal. I moved my team onto monthly reports. I moved all important projects onto weekly catchups where the primary means of communicating was status reports produced before the meeting itself. Brilliant. Now everything that needs to be known is all in one place and can be printed out and read in a minute or two.

- The more you can shape the decisionmaking or information gathering before your meetings the better. Your boss is pushed for time. If you need to have a meeting about x then get the materials together before the meeting and put your thoughts down on paper. Firstly, you'll get what you want more often. Secondly, you need these meetings to be efficient*, and you need to walk out of them with the direction you need to get on and do your job.

*On that note, a CEO of my acquaintance who ran a billion dollar business only ever had half hour meetings. She was busy, and needed to fit x meetings into a finite workday. She put the pressure on her managers to communicate briefly, to the point, and to have done their prep work. It's a harsh way to manage, but if the choice is no meetings or short meetings then make short meetings work by doing the prep beforehand.
posted by MuffinMan at 9:30 AM on July 5, 2013

Ha, sympathy. These are all great suggestions, to which I'd add that I've had some success with the "VSRE" (very short reply expected) approach to email, and also with collecting questions over the course of a week or so and putting them in one email as a bulleted list of yes/no questions. I've also, as you might expect, just used this as an opportunity to take a lot of initiative and assume that my decisions generally don't need my boss's approval. Finally, it's probably a good idea to document what you're doing pretty elaborately, so if you ever do get in a bind, you'll be able to say, "Well, I tried to get a response!"
posted by miriam at 10:24 AM on July 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Sometimes I'm that sort of manager, but I don't mean to be this way so what I do is make it very easy for people who report to me to tell me that they need my attention to organize some our work together a bit better. I have some standing meetings for this very purpose and I make sure that people who report to me don't feel afraid to tell me what they need me to do to enable them to do their work effectively. If you have a cordial working relationship like this, I suggest requesting planning meetings of this sort.
posted by dgran at 12:07 PM on July 5, 2013

even though I asked him directly what projects I need to work on, what bits of those projects I need to work on, and when I need to have them done by

You could try looking around for something that needs to be done, doing the bits you're most capable of doing, and getting them done as quickly as is reasonably practical.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 1:12 AM on July 6, 2013