OK - My self and 5 others have been trying to work around this problem for a year now. But no success. Our boss wants to approve everything that comes out of the department... documents ... presentations ... spreadsheets ... you name it she wants approval of it and have input into it ..
Normally its a 3 to 5 interration of a documents, presentations are worse - hours before you are to do it, shes makeing changes. She has also taken over giveing most of the presentations for the department. Hasn't a clue about what she is talking about but - gives it anyway...
We have tried talking to her - to her boss - making every change that she puts in on the first iterration - It appears she just can't accept other peoples writing style - or doesn't trust her senior staff to put out quality work.
She hasn't been happy because everyone has been turning in worse and worse product - knowing that she is going to rewrite it.. so why spend the time .. she's going to do it..
Any suggestions to get this person to understand..
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One of the main reasons I left the office full time was due to the boss's wife.
The Boss's wife, we'll call her BW, had to touch and manipulate EVERYTHING that came on or out of the office. Nobody could move without her knowing. This was a result of her being the controller when the company was small. Now that special staff has been brought in for various tasks, she still wants to be the center of everything. So she got it. Security reports for her approval. Trace routes, network diagrams, SPAM reports, Anti Virus updates on the latest worm behaviours, web positioning reports, search engine algorhythm changes and updates, you nae it, it hit her desk. Then we all started demending answers, calling back to see if she'd reviewed things she didn't understand in the least and questions about the network that she had no clue about. I think she finally got the idea that she doesn't need to see the things she can't control. If you don't understand it, you're not going to se it.
As for documents, she used to approve all sales documents and rpesentations, until I hacked apart her revisions and showed her faults.
I moved to the island where it is much quieter now and she focuses on other things, like how much creamer is left instead.
If they want control, inundate them and baffle them. Control is easily regained.
I had a manager who once informed herwhole staff that we were to inform herof everything we did. At the end of each day we were required to send hera log of everything we did. I took her at her word. I wrote down EVERYTHING. If I answered the phone I logged the phone call, the time spend, what they called about. I was sending in three page logs. After One week of this she no longer wanted the logs.
I don't think you'll have much luck getting your manager to understand what havoc she is causing. Control freaks have to control. They honestly don't believe anything can work unless they've approved it, tested, signed off on it, whatever. And if you try to convince her, or show her articles on micromanaging, she'll honestly believe those comments and articles are about someone else, not her. I've lived through this problem before and know others who have...and have NEVER heard of anyone making the situation better.
You say you have NEVER heard of someone making the situation better. I resolved it once and for all in my office.
Control freaks can still be conttrol freaks without feeling that they are relinquishing control, even though they are.
Control freaks are often people withoput a commmon sense of reason, therefore it is relatively easy to erverse their game.
As I said, I inundated the controller with a tonne of paperwork. When I called her to review the work, she rarely had any idead of what I was talking about, "That's no problem XXXXXX, I can see you're busy with all the other things you must need to go over." Two weeks later, same thing. Eventually, realizing I would call her and expect her to have revisions or questions, she just told me to handle them myself. By appearing to be lost and in need of her approval, she got over her little control issue and instead did the next best thing for a true control freak, 'DELEGATED' it back to me. By her delegating the work to me, she feels that she is giving me MORE work, thus doing her job, and controlling the paper process.
Sometimes they don't want the info, they don't want to change it, they just need it to look like they are in control of it.
By taking a perfectly fine document and changing it, they are showing that they know best. If you constantly ASK to have a document revised or changed, YOU are in control, they soon get sick of being controlled like this and then delegate the work back to you, thus ultimately controlling the decision once again.
Similar situation here too. My boss wanted anyone who had a pc problem to go to him first so that he could allocate the work to me. So I send everyone here to him, even for things as trivial as change of screensavers. This lasted a week, before he, as you put it, delegated the responsibility back to me.
Heh, I think he got a tiny taste of what its like to be a net admin. You'll be eating your lunch and somebody will just stroll up to you and spill their guts about a their pc problem. I wonder if he may even appreciate what I do around here a little more....nah.
Look up the term "white mutiny". Have everyone that reports to her do 'EXACTLY' what what she says. Don't think about it. Don't try to interpret it. Just do it. Eventually, she'll get the point.
If she's spending so much time re-doing everyone else's job, it makes me wonder when she has time to do her own work! Perhaps she needs more to do... ha ha!
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OK - How do you deal with a Boss that wants to approve everything
Normally its a 3 to 5 interration of a documents, presentations are worse - hours before you are to do it, shes makeing changes. She has also taken over giveing most of the presentations for the department. Hasn't a clue about what she is talking about but - gives it anyway...
We have tried talking to her - to her boss - making every change that she puts in on the first iterration - It appears she just can't accept other peoples writing style - or doesn't trust her senior staff to put out quality work.
She hasn't been happy because everyone has been turning in worse and worse product - knowing that she is going to rewrite it.. so why spend the time .. she's going to do it..
Any suggestions to get this person to understand..