My Boss Made Me Do It

At a staff gathering a while ago I led a session on work productivity. I asked people to think of the most important tasks they do regularly, and then asked them to think about what they spend the most time doing. Then we talked a little bit about why people spend so much time doing tasks that aren’t the ones they think are the most important. The answer? The boss.

Let me say that again: when asked what stood between people and their best work, the answer was the person who oversees that work. This is a problem.

What this means is not that we have bad bosses or bad staff or anything of that sort. What it means is that staff and their bosses are not having conversations about what is most important, and how to prioritize what is most important. As it happened, my own boss’s boss was in the room that day, and so I shamelessly used our interactions as a case study of what happens all the time at work, and what we can do to make it better.

Imagine my boss’s boss pops her head in my office and says: Lisa, we’ve got a proposal due tomorrow and it needs a final edit. Could you please do that? (You can imagine it – I don’t have to, because it happens regularly.)

What do I do? Well, lets imagine the annual report for my project is due in three days, and I still need to run through the data I’ll be including,  make sure we have all the project detail, coordinate with finance to get that bit in there, and then do a copy-edit of the whole thing. It’s a lot of work. It is going to take most of my time over the next three days.

During the session I mentioned earlier, staff said that in a situation like that the only thing they could do was say “Yes!” to the boss’s request because it was their boss asking them to do something. They want to be seen as productive, helpful people. They don’t want to make their boss angry. You don’t say no to the boss.

The problem is that the boss may be asking for help with total ignorance of what you are working on. Maybe they have no reason to know, or maybe they forgot. Maybe they don’t understand how long something takes.

Imagine, in my situation above, that I say “Yes, I’ll edit that proposal,” to my boss’s boss. I spend the next day editing, and do a bang-up job. Boss’s boss is thrilled, I am a shining star.

Then I turn to my neglected report. I have less time than I needed, so I rush. The data isn’t quite all there, but there isn’t time now to go back to the field staff for their review. I finish it up and send it off on time, but barely. Phew. Three weeks later, the donor comes back with questions on that report. The data were confusing, and seemed to be lacking some context. It seems like I made some mistakes when pasting in the financials, and the donor’s budget people want to have a call. With a donor displeased, I go to my boss, and my boss’s boss, and consult on how to handle the mess.

Why, they ask, was that report sloppy? Well, I was busy with that proposal my boss’s boss asked me to do! I’m not magical, I don’t have a time-turner. I can’t re-do hours and be two places at once!  But, they say, that annual report is so important, the primary way we communicate with the donor every year. Why did you take on that editing job? You weren’t the only one who could have done it. Where are your priorities, Lisa???

$%!&

(Let me hasten to say that the mess is indeed imaginary, aside from the fact that I, like everyone else, am frequently asked to do stuff I didn’t plan on doing, and sometimes there have been consequences. No annual reports were harmed in the making of this story.)

I could see the above mess as my boss’s fault for derailing my plans. Or I could see the mess as the result of lack of clarifying priorities with my boss. How might the scenario gone if I had tried to clarify my boss’s boss’s priorities?

Boss’s Boss: Lisa, we’ve got a proposal due tomorrow and it needs a final edit. Could you please do that?

Lisa: I’d like to help. Let me tell you what is on my plate right now and maybe we can figure it out. The annual report is due in a few days, and that is my priority. There is a lot of work left to do on it.

Boss’s Boss: Huh. Yeah, that report is important. Let me check and see who else has time.

Does it always work that way? No. Sometimes you must edit the document, submit the report, and manage your personal life all at the same time and there is simply no way around it. But those situations should be rare, not every day. If you find yourself thinking that your boss is derailing you, undermining you, or otherwise preventing you from getting your work done, you have to ask: why do my boss and I have different priorities? How can we bring them together? For work to work, you and your boss have to agree on what, exactly, that work should be.