Dan Erwin

The Real Secret to Managing Your Boss. And Other Power People.

In my last blog, I pointed out that job security is not based on performance, but mostly upon your ability to manage your boss--specifically your ability to enhance your boss's ego. That's true with all people in power. The truth is that there are plenty of poor performers who are securely entrenched because the boss likes them.  I can hear some of you groan as you read this, but look at it this way. It's a tough world out there, and it's going to get still more personally demanding. So, enhancing your boss's ego is a highly useful survival skill.

 
Recognize, first, that it's not just the insecure that like to feel good about themselves.  All of us are motivated to seek out positive feedback.  And avoid the negative stuff! Part of the reason we get such a bang out of Garrison Keillor and his folk in Lake Woebegone is that it's the place where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.  Seriously, the so-called above average effect has been studied in a very systematic way.  The research shows that we all overestimate our abilities.  U Florida's John Chambers points out that in the surveys more than half of respondents say they are above average on such things as intelligence, sense of humor, appearance, negotiating ability--pretty much everything.  No surprise that Keillor's description of Woebegon is a description we enjoy.

So, one sure way to make your boss feel unhappy, as Jeff Pfeffer points out, is to criticize him or her.  And that's especially true if the issue is very important to your boss and he is a bit insecure about it.  If your boss makes a mistake, see if someone other than you will point it out.

Relationship secret.

It's exceptionally important in my coaching business to find out from numerous interviewees what are the three or four most significant strengths of my client.  That's the beginning place for a long term relationship.  I've learned that very, very few people have much insight into their strengths.  They know all kinds of details about their weaknesses, (which they're unwilling to share with you), but little about their strengths.  Indeed, too often, feedback amounts to the generic stroke: You did a good job.  That's of little value, especially since research from the past twenty years has clearly shown that we don't perform at the highest levels by trying to fix our weaknesses. Instead, the best performance-improvement rule is to leverage our strengths and merely shore up our strategic weaknesses.

So,there's a lot to be gained by figuring out the strengths of the power people in your organization and flattering them.  Here's an example.

One executive, a bit of an asshole, was also a genius at keeping his people focused on the organization's strategy.  That single strength brought profitability to the firm for more than 20 years.  On numerous occasions, I commented to him that I deeply appreciated his focus on strategy, and I'd detail examples from his conversation and behavior.  Furthermore, when people complained about him to me, I often said, What you're saying is true, but John's (fictitious name) emphasis on strategy keeps the company focused on its business, provides a superb income for its managers and people, and keeps you secure in your job.  On numerous occasions John thanked me not only for what I said to him, but also for what he'd found out I said to his people.  That flattery also made it possible for me to carefully give him feedback on his developmental needs.  

Our knee-jerk response is to identify a person's weaknesses. Instead, shift your focus to finding out your boss's important, strategic strengths, and emphasize them to him or her.  Be sure to add to your emphasis that you'd like to learn from your boss's strengths for your own future.  You'll find that flattery has more value than just keeping your job.  

How Important Is It to Manage Your Boss? In Other Words, Why Should You Spend the Time Learning to Manage Your Boss?

The web is rife with questions about bosses.  What do you do when your boss is a jerk?  How can you work with asshole bosses?  Why are some bosses so difficult to deal with?  My boss is a flaming narcissist. Now what?  How can I get out from under my boss's clutches?  Those questions don't seem to go away.  They just keep coming.

My first shot across the bow is that it's important in business and in life to develop a thick skin.  You're always going to be meeting difficult people.  You can't avoid them, so deal with it. I've always thought that a significant measure of my intelligence was tied up in my ability to deal with difficult people.  So I take difficult people as a challenge rather than people to be avoided. I keep score over my successes and put that information into my memory bank for future use.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's go to the more important question:  why should you learn to manage your boss?  It's easy to gloss over how much help you really need from your boss.  Don't forget these three reasons for managing your boss.  

First, your boss is the primary source for the resources you need to get your job done.  Growing up in Detroit with a small Chinese population who were in the laundry and cleaning business, the comment, "no tickee, no washee," was rather well known (Oops.  By now, that's probably politically incorrect and a prejudicial statement.  Oh well.).  You can't get your stuff done, if you don't have a relationship with your boss.  The better the relationship, the more the resources.

In today's world, you're liable to get overloaded with work, really overloaded.  That being the case, it's an important reminder that your boss is the one who can help you prioritize your jobs.  Asking for that kind of help, of course, is a learned skill.

Finally, your boss is the one who can best link you to the rest of the organization.  Your boss can either help or hinder your career.  With a good relationship, he/she can give you all kinds of support, insight and help in linking to others in the organization.  The majority of bosses enjoy pointing to their successes in life.  I know.  I certainly do.

Well, what have you to add?

Why Is Defense Secretary Gates So Successful? And What Can You Learn From That?

Robert Gates has been startlingly successful as Defense Secretary, yet the odds were that Republican Gates would not be successful in a Democratic cabinet.  Why has he been so successful?  What unique, transferable skills does he have that anyone can develop and use?

Gates is an unusual professional in many ways.  He has been advising Presidents for 35 years: Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush One, Bush Two and now Obama.  Significantly, he is the only member of Bush’s cabinet to be asked to stay on in the Obama cabinet. 

 
I’ve encountered many analyses of his expertise, leading me to suspect that he’s a masterful professional.  An extensive article in Time magazine recently detailed Gates’ professionalism and expertise in laser focus.  (A free Time download for future reference is available here.)

Throughout this blog, I hope you’ll be asking what you need to learn from his expertise.

To set the context, as Time and many other articles point out, Gates may well be the single most influential person in Obama’s cabinet.  It was widely believed that Gates would have little influence in a cabinet populated by “lefties.”  That has not been the case at all.  Begin with the fact that unlike Rumsfeld (and Colin Powell), Gates has created a collaborative and supportive, rather than a competitive, relationship with the State Department.  He also maintains a close relationship with Hilary Clinton.  

Managing the Boss

Time quotes an aide who puts it this way:  Gates has always had a keen sense about who is the boss, ‘how they work, what their needs are and how to successfully contribute to their offices.’

That’s a classic statement about one side of managing your boss.  Kotter and Gabarro, who did the research and wrote the classic paper on managing your boss, underline Gates’ activities. They found that it’s important to focus on five issues: compatible work styles, mutual expectations, information flow, dependability and honesty, and good use of your boss’s time.

Gates has inherent similarities to Obama that were not shared with Bush:  cerebral, analytical and reflective.  Their fundamental policy agreement is that they both see terrorism as a long-term challenge.

Gaining resources and commitments

When Gates was invited to converse with Obama regarding the opportunity to stay on as Defense Secretary, he asked the President one question: “Can you trust me?”

When you manage up well, you’re able to get the resources you need to carry out your own job.  As a result, Gates has gotten the support and resources to shift spending from theoretical, conventional wars to the one the military is actually fighting now.  In addition, he helped execute a surge in Afghanistan.  “That’s pretty remarkable,” says a senior defense official.

Far too many employees and managers fail to be able to gain the resources as well as the support of their bosses and as a result also fail to meet their personal and organizational objectives.  This lack of attention given to their bosses and the organizational system keeps them from the opportunities and promotions they desire. 

The Kotter and Gabarro research emphasizes the need to be thorough in managing your boss.  That, they point out, means that bosses are available to link them to the rest of the organization, to help them set priorities and secure the resources they need.  

Managing your boss is not manipulation.  It’s forging ties based on mutual respect and understanding.

Mastering the organizational culture

“I have never seen anyone more effectively maneuver in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government than Bob Gates,” says David Boren who was the former head of the Senate’s select intelligence committee.  “He is extremely good at forming alliances with other people in the government to advance his point of view.”

Everyone believes in alliances and networks, yet few take the time to build them.  On numerous occasions, executives have asked me to help them with the skills for building a power coalition.  Translated, this is merely a network of well-placed contacts with whom you have built relationships of mutual understanding and mutual respect.

The research is exceptionally pointed about mastering the organizational culture through alliances and networks.  The world today is a network society.  My consulting over the years has shown repeatedly that individuals and organizations struggle to learn how to succeed in the network society.  Those who succeed in network and alliance building get better information, ideas, leads, business opportunities, faster promotions and make more money.

What that will mean at any level in the organization, or even as an entrepreneur, is that you need to set aside a significant amount of time building relationships so that as needs arise, you too can work the system to assist others and achieve your own career objectives. 

What that continues to mean is that all of us benefit by enabling our boss so that he/she can enable us, and then taking those same skills to build networks and alliances throughout the organization.  If you’re at entry level, it takes six months to begin to see it’s impact.  But in our flat world, the business person who wants to succeed will make these three competencies front and central.

What do you think?  Why is Defense Secretary Gates so successful?  And what can you learn from that?

Why Doesn't Your Boss Listen To You?

In addition to the fact that you may not understand the business, the firm's strategy, or have the trust of your boss, there are plenty other reasons why your boss doesn't listen.

Steve Tobak of BNET is always worth a thoughtful read and his list of ten reasons why your boss doesn't listen is a good reality check.  

I have another suggestion.  If you want your boss to listen to you, learn how to write a managing up memo.  You'll find the instructions spelled out in detail here.  Thinking through a managing up memo will help clarify your thinking and gain a better handle on making a successful pitch.

Three Keys to Your Work Promotion in The New Economy

About the middle of the 1990's a lot of ideas began to shake out as the technology revolution took control of business.  One of the most important bits of clarity surfaced around the issue of careers and career promotions.  What's driving this post?  Over the past ten years, as more and more research has on organizational behavior has surfaced, the way to get a promotion has become pretty straight-forward. 

But let's get rid of one dumb idea.  That's the notion that if you suck up to your boss, he or she will get the promotion for you.  First, I don't believe in sucking up, and second, the idea is false.  Unless your boss owns the company, very few bosses have much in the way of "promotion power."  Promotions require all kinds of input from all levels, and organizations try to limit promotions to the few because they're expensive.  Furthermore, most organizations don't have an overweening need for managers in the world of flattened organizational hierarchies.  I should add that that situation will be changing over the next five to ten years.  There's going to be a dearth of talent as the boomers retire and technology makes more and more complex demands.  But why wait it out?

People get promoted for three reasons, and all three of them need to be operative: 

1. A quality network. 
2. Competent, high performance on the job. 
3. Calculated luck--you're in the right place at the right time. 

Now let's look at each of these.

The research on network quality has been stacked high for nearly ten years.  It shows that people with a quality network have access to rewards, early promotions and better opportunities.  It does take six months or more to get a network going, but it's well worth the investment in your future. 

In this day and age, performance means a lot more than in the past.  The ability to solve complex problems, demonstrate significant people skills in complex environments, set a pace for creativity and innovation, deal with problems of ambiguity, etc. etc. etc.  The new research on deliberate practice shows that we can grow our way into most any expertise.  

But you've got to advocate for yourself.  The basic way the important people know about the excellence of your performance and the quality of your growing expertise is to advocate for yourself, keep your bosses and peers and internal clients updated, and manage up.  Do it tactfully and indirectly.  Remember that the people with the power to assist you rarely know of your contributions or the value you bring to an organization unless you tell them.  So learn and practice the skills of self-advocacy.

Finally, promotions come as a result of calculated luck.  This means that you'll you need to understand the business, the industry and the economy and work to be in the right place at the right time.  The information is out there with vendors, trade magazines and business journals. 

Recently one of my clients, stymied because of limited opportunities within his firm, talked to me about moving on so that he could get a promotion from another company.  Here's his thinking:  Over the past four years he's developed unique expertise in a business and industry that is undergoing monstrous transitions.  Unique technology has come into the industry.  Very few manager have his background, and most organizations know they've got to make changes and integrate that technology to maintain their competitive advantage.  He's got the network, the competency and he's calculated his opportunities. 

Smart thinking.  The business world is his oyster and he'll eventually get the promotion.  The stuff is out there for every fast tracker.  So, go for it!

And for Gen-Yers?  Wow, this process really works.

So You Didn't Get That Promotion. What Next?

Gen-Xers are well into the management ranks, and, now, some Gen-Yers are getting their first promotion to manager.  Let's suppose you didn't get that anticipated promotion.  What next?

Of course, your boss may be feeling guilty.  If you're a Gen-Yer facing your first management failure, just cool it.  There are a number of useful strategies for your future, beginning with focused feedback.  Indeed, Eilene Zimmerman suggests you tactfully address a number of pointed questions to yourself, your boss and your mentor(s).

First, answer some basic personal questions for yourself:

• Were you aware of the possibility that someone else would get the promotion?
• How important was the promotion to you?
• How well is the company doing over all?
• Were you the only person who didn't get the promotion?

Answers to those questions will set you up for some intelligent interviewing of your boss and perhaps your mentor.  As Zimmerman suggests, don't try to persuade your boss he/she made an error.  You might also talk to some of the other executives that are knowledgable about the issue. Try to find out why you didn't get the job.  Be sure to tell your boss that you're interested in improving for the future and so you want to know the skills to work on.  Try to get some examples. 

One of the consultants suggests it may be just a matter of office politics.  Don't go there.  If it's office politics, nine times out of ten, it's a sign that you don't know how to manage your boss.  People who manage up well know who's going to get the position (or whether they're not going to get the position) long before it takes place.  People who manage their boss well, who work on mutual relationships and mutual dependencies, know what's going on.  If you're important to your boss, he/she will usually confide in you before the announcement--whether or not you get the position.  Check out my post on managing up for a starter and look over the post categories for "managing up."  Furthermore, Kotter and Gabarro's HBReview article on managing your boss is so well known that you can get it free on the web, here:  http://bit.ly/16irnn

FYI:  I respond negatively to most of the stuff about "office politics" or "chemistry not being right."  To a high degree they're both about lack of skills.  Admittedly, the population is largely unaware of both sets of interpersonal skills, but they're out there for those who really want to learn.  If you talk to an HR person or an "expert" who can't explain how to manage office politics and interpersonal chemistry in very effective ways, you've got a traditionalist who hasn't kept up over the last ten years.THIS IS A RANT!

After you've gotten feedback, go to work on improving those skills.  Send your boss an update, and advocate for yourself as you're having difficulty or succeeding.  Build that network of mentors and coaches and ask for their help.

Failure to get a promotion is not life or death.  It may just be a sign that you've got something else to learn.  And if you're not smart enough, yet, to learn how to manage your boss, well . . . you finish the sentence.

What further questions do you have?  I'll be glad to point you to other resources.

Key Skill: Management of the Organizational Culture

Occasionally I either meet or read about a woman at the top of a "male business."  Lina Hudson, President of BAE Systems, land and armaments group, is just such a person.  Recently, the NY Times interviewed her about rising to the top of organizations.  Her basic philosophy is that organizations are built on relationships, and those are the skills you need to get things done. 

Because it's unusual to see an interview with as much emphasis on the ability to work the organizational culture, and because that ability has become more and more important in today's workworld, I want to excerpt her wise comments on managing the organizational culture.   The interviewer sets up her response by asking for Ms. Hudson's best career advice.

I tell people that in a corporate environment, which is all I’ve ever known, first and foremost you need to understand the culture you work in, and find a way to make it work for you rather than trying to fight it. Corporations are very interesting machines. And what you need to look for is the informal power of the corporation, not necessarily the way the organization looks.

An early boss told me, spend the first couple of months in this job figuring out how things really work around here, and then go and establish allies with the real movers and shakers in the organization because that’s the way you will be the most successful. And I advise people to do the same thing.

You can never succeed in a corporate culture on your own. It is all about how you fit, how you know how to make things happen within the infrastructure and in a way that’s acceptable to the norms and values of the corporation that you work in.

Once you catch on to who really pulls the strings and where the real power base is, who you have to collaborate with, who you have to inform, who you have to seek for advice and agreement, you can actually make these big, very, very lumbering organizations work very, very well. It’s all about the informal structure. It’s about the critical relationships, and it’s about fitting in, in a constructive way, so that you really make your decisions that not only benefit yourself but benefit the corporation as well.

Ms. Hudson's comments ring all too true.  You'll want to check out the entire article.

Managing the organizational culture is about the ability to manage up as well as the ability to develop intelligence networks to support your objectives.  In today's flattened organizational world, these are competencies you need to start building the first day of your job.  Don't get caught like a newly promoted vice-president of a major consumer products company who hired me to help him learn how to manage organizational system.  It was such a high priority for the company's new organizational model that he was certain he'd lose his job if he couldn't manage across disciplines (that was about eight years ago).  The possibility that a person could go that far without influence management skills today is practically nil.

What Do You Do When Your Boss Ignores You?

The September 10 issue of the Wall Street Journal has one of those articles sure to inflame the ardor of some and gain a lot of reader comments.  It's the familiar conflict of what to do when your boss ignores you.  The writer, Elizabeth Garone, a well known journalist with a rich history of writing about business issues, responds to a question from a CIO in a bank in Texas who's having great difficulty breaking into the Texas "good old boy" network and getting nothing from the CEO to whom he reports.  He has 25 years of experience in banking with more than 20 years in technology.  He's losing interest in his job, but has a good salary and if he stays for five more years will have a "good salary continuation package."  That's a swell package that will pay his salary from retirement to death, or if needed, from disability to death.

The writer checks out the consultants on her rolodex, asks for reader comments, and gets a number of seemingly relevant answers.  They include:  the boss is a jerk, your boss doesn't understand your value, stick it out for five years and get another job, be straight with your boss and manage him better, learn to choose your bosses better and check out the culture again to see whether you're misunderstanding,etc.

Interesting advice.  However, it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to assess whether any of the answers have real significance.  But it makes for readership and provides possible interpretations so that, at the least, the reader will have different perspectives should he or she be found in a similar situation.  Besides, it's a catchy title and journalism is all about catchy titles.  WSJ seems to be pretty good at getting reader interest--that's their business.

So what is the best way to approach and ultimately resolve power games and conflicts when your boss is part of the problem?

Rather than address the question the way the journalist sets it up, this is an excellent time to lay out the possible parameters for that kind of question.  Once you understand the important parameters of conflict and power, you'll have a better way to look at those issues.  If you start there when faced with difficulty, you'll save yourself a lot of grief.  

In the above situation the questioner and nearly all the commentators believe the boss holds the cards.  That may or may not be the case.  But one thing is clear:  if you start with that lens, you've seriously limited possible resolutions.  

First, here's my disclaimer:  I'm clueless regarding the best possible resolution for the CIO's problem.    However, from ancient history as well as the last 30 to 50 years of related theory and research, we know the parameters of the resolution.  And I'm writing this blog because I've found that more often than not we focus on only two of the possible three parameters that might provide insight to resolution.

As far back as Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.), the ancients understood that when dealing with conflicts you should look at the protagonist, the antagonist and the context:  the CIO, the boss and the organizational culture.   We are often limited by the proclivity of our American culture to focus on the antagonist.  You see it in politics, economics, business and community.  We focused on Hitler during world war II, on Putin, on Bin Laden, on whatever political party to which we're opposed, on the "government" and on "the boss" when we're not getting what we think we deserve.

When it comes to assessing how to manage an an interpersonal difficulty, we're primarily dispositionalists.  That's a neat term referring to our emphasis upon the psychology of the wrong-doer.  As might have been expected, the majority of the comments to the WSJ article emphasized the psychology of the boss as the path to resolution, while a few focused on the skills that the CIO might need to successfully manage the situation. 

If you're focusing on the antagonist, the boss, most of you know the questions:  what are his priorities, values, expectations, desires, needs, competencies, awareness, etc.?  The possible resolution might be within those issues.

If you're focusing on the protagonist, the CIO, you'll be asking:  what skills does he have, how well can he communicate, manage up, understand power, influence, persuade, etc.?  And, the resolution might be within that list of issues.

But don't miss the organizational culture, the context within which conflicts take place.  What are the culture's values, norms, expectations, systems?  And what are the culture's norms for relationships, conflicts, support, etc.?  You can never succeed in a culture on your own.  So you'll need to know how you fit and have built alliances with the organizational movers and shakers.  Unless they own the firm, bosses became who they are because of their relationships with the movers and shakers, and those people are key to the resolution of problems as much, and sometimes more, than the CEO.   On many occasions those people will not only tell you how to understand and manage the boss, but sometimes they'll help you do it.  It's possible that the resolution to the problem may be within the cultural norms and values.

In companies of any size, the major focus of the CEO is upon the financial stakeholders.  People below the CEO actually run the firm.  Many lower level people accept the movie/TV caricature of hierarchy and CEO power.  But, it's actually rare for CEOs to make decisions without the counsel and support of the people.  And in organizations with history, the people are very responsive to the corporate culture and its mythology.  Indeed, the deciding factor for many hires is whether they fit the organizational culture.  After a few years of existence, employees are more a reflection of an organizational culture than the culture is a reflection of the employees.  (You may want to quit a job because you don't like what the culture is doing to you.  Cultures are unbelievable powerful in their ability to shape people.)  So pay a lot of attention to the "rules" of your organizational culture.  They can be the real decision maker and the path to problem resolution.

Bottom line:  Don't get your shorts all knotted up until you understand how the culture works and whether you can manage conflicts by means of cultural expectations.  I have no experience in the culture where my Gen-Y protege works.  Nearly every recommendation I make concludes with this caveat:  "Here are a couple ways to handle that problem in most firms, but don't make a decision until you've checked out their cultural fit.  My recommendation could be well off the mark for your firm."   

I'd love to hear from you.  To what extent do you disagree?  What can you add?  What have I missed.

Gen-Y Skills: What Should You Expect From Your Boss?

With all the input about managing up, working with difficult bosses and the difficulties of getting useful feedback, what really should you expect from your boss.  It's an issue that Jack and Suzy Welch answered in a BusinessWeek column.  Much of what Welch writes is focused on upper level managers, and some of it is 20th century stuff, so I want to translate and adapt the material for Gen-Yers and the 21st century. 

What was interesting about the column setup was that Jack believed that "bad bosses are few and far between," while Suzy, his wife, believed that bosses "who manipulate and torment," were more prevalent.  Most of their friends agreed with Suzy.  What none of these discussions seem to surface is the fact that some of us are very sensitive while others are not especially so.  Those who are more sensitive might have a very different view of the same boss than those who are not.  After a while these definitions of bad versus good bosses are not really that useful.  For some, they may be a cause of frustration while for others they have no significant bad effects.  Thus, the set of expectations Jack and Suzy lay out should be instructive for all of us.

However, since the Welches tend to focus on more senior managers, I will adapt their input to Generation Y.

First, they believe you have the right to expect two candid performance appraisals a year.  Today, performance appraisals get less and less attention for a number of reasons.  Most performance appraisals in even the best companies are largely a waste of time and most employees know that.  Feedback and appraisals are valuable only in the context of your work, and time often renders them of little value.  You have the right to expect feedback input once a month and that would be generous for 95% of professionals.  What that means is that you're going to have to learn to get a useful session with your boss.  It also means that it's inappropriate to expect more than one session a month.  If you get more than that, good for you.   

It's reasonable to expect a boss who doesn't play favorites.  That's certainly true, but it's not much of a big deal for most professionals.  Favoritism grows more easily in hierarchical settings--old GE, GM and Ford.  Indeed, if you think someone is a favorite, there are often two important things going on.  That person is a solid performer and he/she also knows how to manage the boss.  Both of those behaviors can be learned.  If you're frustrated with the attention someone is getting, you know how to change the relationship:  solid performance in the achievement of the boss's goals and managing up.  I've known exceptions to those rules, but the state of demands, change and innovation are so pervasive today that most who might play favorites have no time for the game.

It's reasonable to expect your boss to support you when you're in the middle of important performance situations.  Although you may expect your boss to know when you need help, remember he/she is not a mind reader.  You'll need to communicate your need, and it is appropriate to expect support at that time.

Finally, it's resonable to expect that your boss will have a significant degree of integrity.  She should be able to be trusted, and you should be able to expect a degree of fairness about the relationship and her performance.  Bosses can't always be as transparent as we might like for strategic reasons.  Furthermore, some people are more valuable to the ongoing success of the firm than others.  Reality says that if your skills are not at the core competence of the firm you may not get the straight skinny all the time.  It's a case of wants versus needs.  You should be able to get what you need, but you can't count on getting what you want.

Welches' last paragraph is exceedingly appropos:

We understand that we're in an economic period when beggers--read, most employees--can't exactly be choosers about their bosses.  We also know how much a boss can affect your quality of life.  Bottom line, then:  Go ahead and hope for the best, but be prepared to settle for a realistic set of expectations.

What's been your experience?  What do you think?

HOW TO WRITE A "MANAGING UP" MEMO

One of the biggest complaints of Gen-Yers is that no one is listening to their ideas.  To a significant degree this is not because their ideas are bad, but because most employees don't sell up the right way.  One way to "sell up" is by means of a print memo in support of a conversation between you and your boss.  

Quite a few years ago one of my clients gave me a suggested memo format for "managing up."  It was from either Northwestern or Harvard Business School.  Anyway, it's gotten a lot of use and found to be very successful.  Part of the reason it's successful is because it forces you to give some serious thought to your ideas, rather than walking into your boss's cubicle half-cocked.

Although you may send it email, this is a case where paper often works better than email.  At senior levels nearly always go with paper, not email.  It's more persuasively formal.  Here's the memo format:

1.    Make a concise statement of the change you think is needed, necessary or appropriate.  What's the current situation  that could be improved upon?  Summarize the change in three or four sentences--that forces you to be clear and concrete.

Detail what's wrong (in three or four more sentences) with the current situation.  Remember to define what's ineffective from your boss's point of view, from her/his value system or perspective.

2.  Identify at least three alternative methods for resolving the problem situation one of which is "do nothing."

For each alternative (A, B, C) make two short columns of pros and cons.  List costs, payoff, disadvantages, advantages or whatever, in phrases.

3.  This is optional, but you may identify the alternative you prefer and highlight your reasons.  It's optional, because you may want to wait to explain your preference in person rather than write it out to let your manager know where you stand immediately.

4.  Ask for your manager's additions, comments, reaction.

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Schedule a meeting to present the memo in person, or else to discuss the memo if you've already sent it.  Probably half of the managers in the workforce are print-oriented and want to see your recommendation on paper before you get to your meeting.  The other half don't care.  You should know which your boss prefers and you will want to follow his preference.

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5.  This also is optional.  Include a statement to the effect that if your manager has no additional questions or comments, and you have heard nothing back by _____date____, you will proceed with alternative A, B, or C.  If your boss is disinterested, he/she may not care what you do.  If your boss is one of those who just lets ideas "die," this puts a feedback mechanism in place.  You'll have to be the judge of how your boss will react to this approach.

You should be able to do all of this in less than a single page.  If it takes more than a page, put some of the material into an appendix, but keep the 5 steps to less than a page.  Managers, even if they're print-oriented want simplicity and brevity.  Short and sweet.

Last month my protege wanted to make several recommended changes to a required training program.  The vendor's training material contained process errors, and though the material had been used for several years, no one had caught them.  He handed his managing up memo to his boss and talked to her about the training problem.  She set up a meeting with two or her relevant peers, invited him back (with his memo) and he made his recommendations.  The training program was cancelled and the material sent back to the vendor for revision.  His recommendation, of course, went into his file with the appropriate recognition.