How to get your boss’s support
March 28th, 2007
I’ve been waffling for awhile on starting this blog, but I came across something the other day that I NEEDED to share. So, here we go. Let’s kick this blog off with a bang!
My friends Jim and Michele McCarthy have been studying team work for over 10 years. Not studying in the sense of reading a bunch of books, but studying as in getting their hands dirty and working with real-life teams. Over time, they have identified a series of best practices for creating high performance teams. Lucky for us, they share this good stuff with us in a regular podcast.
Here’s what got me excited the other day.
How to get your boss’s support on something you want
- Find some peers who agree with you on something that needs to get done, or about a new idea
- Go to the boss as a group. Tell him:
“Hello boss! We unanimously support the following idea… <state your idea>
“Do you have any better ideas?” - The boss probably won’t have a better idea, so you ask him:
“So, can we count on you for support?” - Your boss wants you to get good things done, so he will most likely say “Yes!” -or-
your boss may need the support of his bosses, in which case you start working on getting his peers to join your cause. Then your boss goes with his peers to the next higher level up, just as you did in step #2.
Hearing this process was a “well, duh” moment for me, not because it is common practice, but because it isn’t common practice and makes so much sense.Â
I also like how this process builds on top of a lot of the other good ideas that the McCarthy’s share: use teams to do hard things, focus on ideas (not people), and build consensus from the ground up.
There’s additional information in the podcast, so check it out.
March 28th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
My boss is a woman. Will this strategy still work or is it only for bosses who can accurately be referred to as “him”?
March 28th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
It looks like Jim and Michele are doing some interesting work but it seems strange that they would choose a quote from a Vice President of Halliburton as the “satisfied customer” blurb on the webpage.
March 28th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Dan- yes, it works for “her” bosses too of course. =) Forgive me if using him/her, he/she, etc. etc. feels ungainly to me.
March 28th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
This is fine for bosses who have a good sense of self and a healthy, realistic ego. However, many bosses don’t fit that description. They want to own the ideas or even believe that they are the ones that thought of something first. The stuff from Jim and Michele sounds like an end-run around the boss’s authority, and as likely to get someone in trouble as it is to be helpful to a company. Going to a boss with an already “unanimous” opinion doesn’t include his/her thoughts, so it really isn’t unanimous. It doesn’t have the support of the person it needs the most.
March 28th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Hi Sheila, good point! You would have to have a good relationship with your boss for this to work. You make an important point- this process doesn’t stand by itself. In the podcast, Michele suspects that two of their other ideas support this one- 1. that you have The Perfect Boss, and 2. that you treat your Boss As Your Best Customer.
April 21st, 2007 at 10:12 am
to the person squacking about halliburton: we are proud of all our customers. Do you really think the 87500 (or so) employees of halliburton are uniformly evil? i don’t defend graft, corruption or any kind of indentifiable evil. one of the greatest common evil behaviors is grouping people and thereby showing prejudice. this writer is showing prjudice.
to the person who fears “end running” their boss and approaching him/her with a good, unanimously supported idea, it is likely you are working for the wrong boss, or you are reading them wrong, or both.
to tim, i say: good work, and thanks for moving the message.
to the person
April 26th, 2007 at 8:43 am
RE: halliburton.
Well, my grandma always said “you are the company you keep”. If you work for a company and you know that they are involved in war profiteering, you’re hands are dirty whether you want to admit it or not. You aren’t evil but you can’t claim innocence either if you know your year end bonus has blood on it.
A bit preachy? Probably, so lets point the finger back at me. I’m sure I’ve been associated with some ugly company in my history. I haven’t knowingly worked for one but I probably have some disreputable companies in my mutual funds and I know I’ve used a big box store who’s politics and business practices I don’t agree with. Is succumbing to convenience an evil? Ah yes - sloth,
But as long as the poster brought up the concepts of evil and grouping I thought it would be important to point out another “common evil behavior”; the mob mentality. If thousands of people are ignoring the problem then it doesn’t exist right? Sort of a variation of the old tree falling in the forrest bit.
RE: Boss’ support
I’m not sure why the technique wouldn’t work with most bosses. I don’t see it as doing an “end run” around him/her/it as much as coming to her/it/him with a complete, well-thought-out idea and asking it/him/her for their opinion and to take it further. If your boss needs more ego-stroking then you play up the part where you need his/her/its input.
If you do it in an open and honest manner and with the project’s, department’s, or company’s benefit in mind it is hard to see how this would get “someone in trouble”. Plus, because you’ve vetted the idea amongst your peers and have come to the boss with a consensus it would be hard for /himerit/ to single someone out. If you are in the place where you are worried that you might “get into trouble” for your ideas then you may want to examine your own attitude before placing the blame on the big bad boss.
BTW: I agree with Tim. See how annoying it is to be politically correct over being grammatically correct? I decided to include “it” in case these postings still exist in the future when robots are our masters and they force “funny-hat” day on us every Thursday.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Here are two additions: phrase the idea as a question, and do homework on the idea to see if it is relevant/timely/likely to be accepted by the boss. For example say, “we were thinking about action x as an option to solve problem y for reasons a,b and c. What do you think?
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:03 am
@Peter - yes, don’t go into your boss on a whim, make sure you have actual consensus. Also, don’t forget that there is power in boldness!