Dealing with disorganized, hectic manager.
I want to make my manager's life easy and try to anticipate their needs. Their life seems like total chaos. They are constantly distracted by emails and IMs, always multitasking, and I find I have to repeat/communicate things to them multiple times since they're only half-listening, all of the time. I enjoy working hard and being proactive but sometimes feel I get caught in this BS culture of "drinking from the fire hose" and "putting out fires" which seems to me is in part due to a lack of ability to focus, prioritize, and manage tasks and teams, as well as set boundaries. I would rather know what my manager wants and needs so I can work on it ahead of time and have it all stored and saved somewhere they can access at their convenience rather than open up IM or email and feel like alarm bells are going off bc everything is an emergency. Trying to move in this direction but am looking for pointers from others who have been through it. Not sharing TC or role since I don't want to divulge anything that would narrow down who I am (don't get excited I'm an anon nobody). I'll just add that I think Amazon is a great place to work and it seems like the world at large is distracted, unfocused, and living in a constant state of stress and reaction. I try to carve out my own chunk of sanity, and I took the job at Amazon because in my last role I was way overworked and way underpaid. So I'm happy being here and just want to improve and make my manager's life easier.
The situation you have described is common in many businesses across all industries. Some people try to avoid places with this type of culture, but I think it’s an invaluable skill to be able to deal with a hectic environment so I applaud you for your being proactive. But I’d like to understand what you are looking for. The problem is that everything is constantly on fire and you want to be ready Freddy with the fire extinguisher. There will always be more fires and eventually it will wear you down. Are you in a place where you can talk to your manager about the state of priorities? Hectic work cultures and lack of priorities is typically a failure in management. Don’t enable your manager to continue their bad behavior, figure out why they are lighting fires.
Yeah there are many reasons why things are the way they are. Luckily I'm in a position to help guide things moving forward and I sense my manager is open to ideas. It's hard for all of us to change our habits and ways of being and working. They would like greater sanity in their life too.
You can't solve your managers work style problems. The only thing you can do is change managers/group/company or maneuver yourself more independently (if possible) from them
True. Luckily I am fairly independent as is based on my role but it's still a task to help bring sanity to the team I'm working on right now. Only been here a few months and my role is niche so there's not a lot of manuverability, plus there are lots of pros to my role.
Use IM / email to communicate. Tell him/her you would like to help out with more tasks than you currently handle?
A big way to build trust between manager and report from the report perspective is exactly what you’re trying to do. From the managers side, they need to have a consistent or predictable behavior or pattern. If not, then you cant do your part. Which is whats happening. I’ve had experiences with unpredictable leaders, very hard to work with, zero trust, and coaching didn’t help even when it was sought out by that leader himself. So for you no ideas other than to have discussion with your manager and see if he/she can get into a more predictable pattern.
Thanks that's a new idea to me. I am thinking about suggesting 1-on-1s where we use pen and paper for to-dos instead of having computers open. They are constantly distracted by chime messages, emails, and notifications. I don't think they realize they can disable windows sounds. I appreciate your comment and will take that in to consideration with how I'd like to proceed.