Why some bosses really are poor value for money

Shall I book a table? Some bosses need to spend less time sorting out their social lives.
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RBS chief executive Stephen Hester found himself at the centre of a political storm last week over his near £1m bonus. The 51-year-old banker argued that he was a “commercial animal” and wanted to be paid as such.  However, given the press and public maelstrom whipped up by the size of his salary,  Hester decided to waive the bonus in return for a quiet life. Good decision.

Now, I’m not suggesting for one moment that Hester isn’t worth every penny that he’s paid for his role in getting back the £45bn of taxpayers’ money spent on bailing out RBS.  However, this story did make me think about people I have worked for (obviously not Stephen Hester), who have turned “doing sod all” into an art form.

Here are my top ten reasons why I think some bosses give poor value for money.

Tweeting:  Now I love Twitter, and think it’s a fantastic way of informing lots of people about your products, services, breaking news, live commentary, and so on. You tweet to your followers and, if what you say is interesting enough, they’ll  retweet the tweet to their followers and the whole thing spreads like wildfire. However, if you’re the editor of a local paper, shouldn’t you be tweeting about, for example, the latest stories your newspaper is putting up on the web, jury verdicts, traffic delays  and accidents on local roads, football news, competition results and a whole host of other things   that affect your readers? You would not expect someone on a regional editor’s salary to spend the whole day tweeting about Libya, now would you?

‘Borrowing’ staff to compile material for awards: I’m not a fan of awards ceremonies. The term “award-winning” should be treated with scepticism, unless it applies to something worthwhile and recognised, such as the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, the Grammys, Oscars, Brit Awards, Booker Prize... something you can point to and say “Wow, the person who won that must be really talented.” And even then, I still think they’re a bit narcissistic and rigged to some extent.  
     I do believe, however, that in-house awards are a total waste of time and money. They’re just an excuse for endless emails about hotel rooms and coach pick-up times, followed by a night filled with pissed people, bad dancing, awful dresses and fat arms. Lazy bosses love these awards because it gives them the chance to take people away from their normal jobs – leaving the department even shorter staffed than it is already – and make them spend three days researching and putting together material to get the team on the shortlist. All the boss has to do is keep asking: “How are you getting on?” from time to time, and let the poor hapless sod do his job for him. In the meantime, the boss goes into the office, pulls the blinds down* and pretends to be working.

Breaking off work to do non-work activities: Bosses who do this have such a limited concentration span that they have to keep leaving the building. This could be to have a smoke, meet their dealer, join the queue in M&S, or anything that begins with the words: “I’m just popping out for a while, you can get me on my mobile....”

Nitpicking:  There are few things more soul-destroying than having to keep going back on perfectly good, sometimes even very good work because someone decides they want it changed. And why do they want it changed? Because they’re the boss and they want to ram that fact down your throat. The title of this blog, The Blue Marker Pen, gets its name from the pile of proofs aggressively covered in blue ink, which we used to face every morning. We had to redo nearly all the previous night team’s work before we could start on our own work. Almost none of that was necessary.

Phoning  home: This is another example of a boss wasting company money by having long, sometimes heated, discussions with their partner about domestic issues they could resolve at home. Often, the manager conducts these conversations  with their office door wide open, or worse still, out in the department. Having a borderline obsessive fascination with the boss’s private life is a given, so this means everyone else slows down or stops working to listen in. More time wasted.

Meetings: Now here’s an opportunity to really waste the company’s money, and for the boss to bolster his sense of importance. Most meetings I’ve attended go on for far too long, there are far too many of them, they swallow up valuable working time and score poorly on the cost-effectiveness scale.  Of course, if you’re the sort of boss who thinks work is an extension of his social life, why not get your colleagues to come up with ideas for themed meetings, such as beer and sausages, cider and pasties, Chilean wine and chilli?... I think you get the gist.

Wafting around the building:  This involves walking about the building holding a folder stuffed with pieces of paper and chatting animatedly to staff in other departments. They think your boss is a really good bloke – but then they don’t have to work with him. This type of boss-action is poor value for money on two levels.
1.       While the boss is doing this, he’s not working, nor is he contributing to the morale of his own department.
2.       He’s stopping other people from  working.

 Abusing their position: This includes coming in late, going early, or taking extended lunch breaks with no explanation – just because they can.

*Secrecy and deceit:  This involves disappearing into their office and pulling down the blinds on the pretext of having a meeting. What they’re really doing is putting their feet up and watching football on their laptop with the sound turned off. 

Refusing to learn:  Poor value bosses are lazy creatures, so it’s hardly surprising to learn that they don’t like to soil their hands at the coalface – although they do love the expression “at the coalface”. They drop these words into the conversation quite regularly to make it sound like they understand how their department works. In reality, they don’t want to learn the latest technology because that way (a) they can’t be called on to fill in for anyone else, and (b) they can demand other people drop what they’re doing and bail them out, thereby reinforcing their position as ‘The Boss’.

All of the above examples are taken from my own experiences.

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