How to deal with managers who always seem to know best?

Question

Hi All,

I am Team Lead for development and systems admin within a small company. I answer directly to the Director of the company. She is fairly difficult to work with as she almost always knows best, regardless of her level of technical expertise. She changes her mind on what should be a priority and consistently comes up with new great wonderful ideas that would destroy productivity and proven processes.

My question is this; How have you dealt with a non-techical manager / boss who seems to always know better? Sometimes they do know better, I'll give them that. I am not a pretentious developer who thinks is god's gift to programming. I enjoy being told I am wrong and shown why and where I can improve. This question is relating to times where it is imperitive that the right decision is made and its not because they know better (ie, priority put on new website design / changes instead of db optimisation where table-level-locks are a frequent occurance).

Do you go elsewhere where you have more freedom and your knowledge is respected, or do you grit your teeth and just do what you are told?

I should add that I believe in the company and the product and I'd like to set my roots in here. Leaving is always an option but I would definitely prefer not to.

Answer 1

A lot of it is personality. I think most developers have had to deal with this in their careers. Here are my tips.

• Always voice your opinion and explain why your idea needs to be done.
• Always show the value it has to the business, if you can attach dollar values to it, do so.
• Don't get upset, try to control your emotions.
• Attempt compromise.
• If all of the above fail, simply accept it.
• In most cases, fix it anyway.

Another thing to do if your manager is not technical is to stress the quality aspects. Quality and Business Value are terms that make their ears perk up.

I'd also like to recommend a book:

Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management

Despite the title, the target is not just management. It gives a lot of insight into how manager's think.

Edit

Another great book:

How to Win Friends and Influence People

The title is cheesy, and almost sounds desperate. Despite this, it's a classic. Just a handful of the knowledge within this book can do loads to improve your interpersonal skills.

Answer 2

It wasn't explicitly stated, but have you told her that you think she is wrong? I mention that because people often aren't comfortable challenging their authority figures. I used to be the same way, so I know :) If you do talk, always give reasons for why you think the way you do. If you leave it to stand only on opinion, then that won't be very convincing.

Often respect doesn't come until you've been at a place for a while. Have you been there long? Have you worked for this manager long? If you haven't, that may be a part of the issue.

The ability to sway management is also highly correlated with the ability to provide solutions. At my job we have a saying about some that they "have skins on the wall." They have hunted, killed, brought back their prey and have shown their value. They are listened to more than others. Sometimes it takes that.

But, it is always possible that there are just personality conflicts that will never go away. Some people just suck emotionally and professionally and can't see beyond their ideas. If that's the case, and they aren't going anywhere soon, you may have to leave. Sad to say, but sometimes it is the only answer. And I've been there too.

Answer 3

There are a lot of answers around here for leadership techniques and dealing with difficult people. In the example you gave though, you stumble upon something that I'd like to point out...

Non-technical people cannot show technical work as a tangible accomplishment.

This means that the database-locks have no value whatsoever to him/her. A redesign of the look of the application is, however, tangible.

So, if you really want to get the [real and proverbial] database lock issue fixed, I think you have 2 choices:

1. Make it tangible - Log the locks and the current URL of the application. Find out the frequency of errors in actual numbers to see if it's really a big deal. I guarantee that if your database lock issue is happening on, say, a "Confirm Payment" page, then it WILL be a higher priority than the design. On the other hand, you may find out that it's not a big enough deal to yield any business value, and that she's right. Either way, when working with non-technical people, don't bring non-tangible issues or issues of little business value to the table.
2. Work bugfixes into other tasks - Ask (or don't, for that matter) to include the lock bugfix into the redesign of the application. Unless it's a huge mess, just take care of it. The purpose of a redesign is to make a user's experience more pleasant, and certainly receiving DB transaction errors is not pleasant! :)

Answer 4

If your boss always knows best, confront issues you foresee by asking for your bosses opinion on how to approach it. It'll stroke their ego. Bonus points for prepping beforehand, knowing the best answer & manipulating them into buying into it as well.

That said, pick your battles - constantly confronting someone will be seen as overly critical or argumentative.

Answer 5

All is not lost! There are plenty of things you can do in this type of situation to tip your hand!

The answers above are fantastic, and I have a few other things I'd like to throw in, just in case they're helpful.

First up, Jo Owen has an excellent book How To Lead. You might not see it this way (yet), but your boss needs you to lead her. This is "upwards management", and if applied in conjunction with unwavering loyalty, will help you both to work together, and make you BOTH look great; she'll be providing results, and she'll be indebted to you for them, but happily so!

Next, STRUCTURE! If things are getting switched around, and in a related vein to routeNpingme's answer, make things real! Get issue tracking software in (I'm a FogBugz diehard), and put things in there. Then to change things, she'll actually have to 'enter your domain'. It's only a little thing, but psychologically, everything becomes more real. When she's using the system, there'll be just a touch of hesitation, and that will help!

Thirdly, lying for the greater good is sometimes necessary. See, you won't be able to update the website until you've resolved the issues with the database. We've run some figures and we can see that to support the same number of users accessing the site with a more modern design, the database load is going to increase by 250->350%; if we resolve the database issues we can fly with the hardware we have, but otherwise... well, it'll be a fair chunk of server investment.... would you like me to mark this as a DEPENDENCY in Fogbugz? ;)

As other posters have said, it's a personality thing, and the more you empower yourself to help her achieve great results, and the more you care about getting great outcomes - which you certainly sound like you do, the easier your task will be - once you see the situation clearly.

Answer 6

In all cases (difficult boss, difficult users, difficult boss/user, difficult QA, etc.) you need to do the following.

1. Take copious notes. Write down everything. No matter how crackpot. You don't have to actually do what they say. You have to listen and consider it. You don't have to do it. Play to Executive Attention Deficit Disorder. They'll forget the dumb stuff in 2 weeks.

2. Make a burn-down chart of things to be done -- in priority order.

3. Make each thing on the chart 2 weeks or less of effort. Decompose big things into small things to keep under the 2-week limit. Less time is good -- don't combine two one-week things. Keep them as two separate one-week things.

4. After each new brilliant idea, log it, and finish the (no more than 2-week) thing you were working on. Always finish what you are doing. Never interrupt -- except to go to meetings to listen to new brilliant ideas.

5. Meet at the end of the 2-week effort to finish something. At this meeting, review what's been finished and prioritize the burn-down chart, putting the new brilliant idea in it's place.

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Also. "that would destroy productivity and proven processes" This may -- or may not -- be true. We have our personal preferences for a process. Whether or not it's "proven" is an entirely different thing.

If you're adamant about your "proven process", you may be fighting over something of no real value. Consider that there's a small possibility that your "productivity and proven processes" may not be as valuable as you'd like them to be.

Answer 7

Let’s try to get things in a perspective. Look for a moment at the responsibilities within the company and the way they are distributed. The director gets her mandate directly from the company owners; she is ultimately responsible for running the company and might even end up in prison if she or her company fails to comply with the law.

She delegates part of her responsibilities and decision making power down the ladder; however she is still responsible for any consequences of your action as long as you performed within your remit. Actually she is responsible for setting up controls, checks and balances to catch you out if you go outside your remit.

The bottom line is that her legal responsibility for company performance is all encompassing and much greater than that of any of her subordinates.

The way delegation of power and responsibility works it is based partly on formal legal agreements, laws and mostly on trust. If you were ever caught out quietly executing your own agenda (as some of the answers suggest) on the expense the company objectives she has clearly set the trust is going to be badly damaged. The consequences would vary proportionally to the offence, but in the mildest case it is likely that you will find yourself on a periphery with much less responsibility and power to change things.

So don’t fight, acknowledge the facts: it’s her game; it’s her ultimate responsibility and her decisions. The things that could help handle the situation:

• Act within your remit.
• When in doubt discuss your remit with the boss, to clear up any misunderstandings about your responsibilities.
• Bring anything up that can realistically affect your ability to fulfil your responsibilities and openly ask for her support with these issues (extra resources, time, guidance etc). If in doubt discuss what kind of support you can and cannot expect.
• Build up the trust by standing behind directors decisions (even when you disagree) and acting in her interests.
• Present any important issues in a form that is meaningful to her and relevant to her objectives.
• Don’t expect her to do your job: if the job involves providing a robust web site within constraints of budget, time and human resources don’t keep going about irrelevant table locks, talk in terms she understands (money, man-hours, uninterrupted service, priorities), but be prepared for a deep drill down into some of the issues.

Apart from handing over the responsibilities she implicitly agrees to give you a certain level of support necessary for you to be able to fulfil them. If the director fails to do so then start looking for another job. Don’t try to change or educate her, just look after yourself and the responsibilities you have taken.

Hope this doesn’t sound as a pile of useless business-speak and actually helps.

P.S. Look up agency theory for better understanding of how your relationship with the director supposed to work and how to make it work productively.

Answer 8

I recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People.