My boss is the bottleneck for workflow

[Anonymous]

My boss, who I like as a person, is driving me crazy. I can't move things along as fast as I want because of his work style. I know I can be a bit of a type-A personality, but I think he is (to quote Prince) just a bit too leisurely.

On most days he arrives 30 minutes late, has breakfast at his desk while reading the paper on line, makes phone calls unrelated to work, works for about 30 minutes and then it is off to the gym, returns from the gym, more telephone calls and internet reading with a smattering of work, then lunch, after lunch he will work for a good 2 hours between internet surfing and telephone calls, and then it is time to "leave a bit early today" for various reasons. If he works more than three hours on any given day, I would be surprised.

I would not care except I need him to sign off on things. Ugh.

[Anonymous]

Your post resonated with me, OP, except my boss is a bit opposite - always "so busy" with her own stuff that she never has time to review/sign off on mine. She likes to "walk and talk" during our meetings, which helps her appear to give me face time without actually looking at any of the documents I need her to review.

My boss at my previous position also sounds a lot like yours except he also had self-proclaimed ADD - I could never tell if he was serious or joking when he said it b/c he would always laugh. But what worked well with him was to schedule a weekly meeting where we brought everything we needed him to review and sign off. It was kind of painful sometimes to sit there and watch him go through everything (we sent it as read aheads but would also bring printed copies because usually he wouldn't look at them) but worthwhile so that we could make forward progress on our tasks.

[Anonymous]

I have a bottleneck boss, for other reasons. What I have found, is that my best bet is to go around him whenever possible. Need something signed? The next guy up the line is actually easier to get hold of and will respond faster. Or I try to set things up so that someone else needs to sign off on things (someone, anyone but him).
It seems that everyone in our organization knows he is a bottleneck, so there's a lot of understanding.

[Anonymous]

I used to have a boss like this. Ugh. So supremely frustrating. I hated looking like I wasn't "on the ball" to others, and yet it made me look that way b/c my stuff was hung up in his office waiting, waiting, waiting. We had to answer to Congress too, so after a while, we all just started referring calls and queries to him. What else coudl we do? He then got mad and told us to take the blame -- for him. It was a bad work situation. I eventually left, b/c of the generally awful atmosphere there, to which this only contributed!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I used to have a boss like this. Ugh. So supremely frustrating. I hated looking like I wasn't "on the ball" to others, and yet it made me look that way b/c my stuff was hung up in his office waiting, waiting, waiting. We had to answer to Congress too, so after a while, we all just started referring calls and queries to him. What else coudl we do? He then got mad and told us to take the blame -- for him. It was a bad work situation. I eventually left, b/c of the generally awful atmosphere there, to which this only contributed!

(He was also about 70 years old, couldn't keep up with modern technology, and was just a bad fit for this post all around.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a bottleneck boss, for other reasons. What I have found, is that my best bet is to go around him whenever possible. Need something signed? The next guy up the line is actually easier to get hold of and will respond faster. Or I try to set things up so that someone else needs to sign off on things (someone, anyone but him).
It seems that everyone in our organization knows he is a bottleneck, so there's a lot of understanding.

I would be very, very careful with this strategy. Maybe you works for you PP, but this type of thing would be the kiss of death in many an org.

[Anonymous]

This is my boss. Holds things up, has tons of meetings, everything else gets signed off on and in meetings will say how now is a great time to do [insert task that has been on her desk for months]. Drives me crazy. I don't have a solution so if others have a remedy that would be great. Going above her head isn't feasible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a bottleneck boss, for other reasons. What I have found, is that my best bet is to go around him whenever possible. Need something signed? The next guy up the line is actually easier to get hold of and will respond faster. Or I try to set things up so that someone else needs to sign off on things (someone, anyone but him).
It seems that everyone in our organization knows he is a bottleneck, so there's a lot of understanding.

OP do not do this unless everyone else is doing it and you know it for a fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is my boss. Holds things up, has tons of meetings, everything else gets signed off on and in meetings will say how now is a great time to do [insert task that has been on her desk for months]. Drives me crazy. I don't have a solution so if others have a remedy that would be great. Going above her head isn't feasible.

I forgot to mention that she knows she's the bottleneck but won't do anything about it besides lip service.