The Unmanagable Manager

Sarah and Pamela work in the advertising department of an investment bank. Pamela is new to management and Sarah is the first person to be placed under her supervision.

Pamela is desperate to make a good impression, making checklists, monitoring Sarah’s progress and reporting to senior management.  As a result she has almost become over-organised, and now expects Sarah to work to the same pattern, going as far as to plan three one-to-one progress meetings a week to ‘see where we’re at’.

Sarah’s starting to see this as a bit of a nuisance;

• She feels over-managed and undermined. She has found her own system that works well, her projects are always completed well before deadline dates and there’s never been a problem before, so she doesn’t see a need to change what works and disrupt her work pattern.

• Sarah emails a progress report to Pamela at the end of each week, she sees increasing this to every second day totally unnecessary and a waste of time; after all, how much valuable progress can she make in such a short space of time?

• Sarah now feels that half her time is being taken up preparing for these ‘progress meetings’ and she can’t get fully stuck into her work.

• The fact that Pamela has even penned in these appointments three times a week worries Sarah, she feels it looks really bad to senior management, making her look incompetent and in need of regular one-to-one tuition.

In her attempt to make a good impression Pamela has gone into management overdrive, Sarah has tried to reach a compromise but to no avail leaving her feeling helpless and over scrutinised.

So what do you do in this situation? How do you get through and manage the unmanageable manager?

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