I stopped trying to get work done. I chill on sites like Lemmy between meetings. My micromanagers don’t notice because they’re all in meetings. I’m not worried about not looking busy. Everyone else is too busy trying to look busy to notice that I don’t look busy.
Not quite the same for me, but realizing I could command line automate Hubstaff (productivity tracking software) means my time sheet is always accurate and in budget.
One of the things I have learned is that a lot of middle management don’t have tangible roles, so they make up for this by recognition, which is usually “presence.” So they have meetings to be seen, stay relevant, and look important. Like, how do you measure management as a product? It’s a social game, primarily. I’m not saying all or any large percentage of management is like this, but there are a LOT.
“What do you say you DO here, exactly…?” And they start to sweat.
Edit: Clarifying I know there ARE effective ways for an organization to do this, but that doesn’t mean they do or even know how :/
When I was a middle manager I handled most of the communication with my team via teams or email. We had a 1 on 1 every other week and I was available otherwise if a meeting was necessary but otherwise all I needed was quick updates on where they were at with various projects we had going on. My boss on the other hand was constantly pulling me into shit I didn’t need to be involved in. I had reporting available at hand I could have sent them whenever they needed it but they didn’t know what to do with themselves if their schedule wasn’t full.
Like, how do you measure management as a product?
Define their responsibilities is a first step. In addition I just to clearly defined tasks, survey the people they manage to get an idea of how well they are doing with guided questions like whether they are taking care ofnobstacles and increasing communication efficiently like making good calls on what should be an email vs what should be a prodictive meeting.
It can be hard to measure, but so is any position with complex goals that require other people to do their job too.
Some of our clients spend over half the budgeted hours holding us in meetings. Meetings help the people that don’t actually do anything seem valuable by looking busy. Once we, the people that actually do the work, finish our task successfully, the meeting attendees take a victory lap and congratulate each other for their amazing teamwork. We don’t mind.
Im on some uselessly large distribution list at work for some eternally failing project that I don’t work on.
They most recently announced a new framework of extra meetings to try to turn things around …
