I overheard a snippet of conversation from the next table at a coffee store, the gist of which was one woman, a 20-something attorney, complaining to another woman about her boss and their organization's management in general. It was a scene and a conversation that I have overheard countless times in countless coffee stores and airports in various cities and countries. The main complaint,at least the small part I heard,was that the boss didn't have a clue as to how to best use her talents and abilities. He or she--I couldn't discern the gender--gave assignments that were trivial and could better have been handled by a clerk, or organized and directed projects in ways that made no sense to the people actually doing the work. Even worse, some directions added cost for clients and subtracted value from the larger project.
Given the frequency with which we hear the lament that "my boss doesn't know how to get the most from me," maybe what this exposes is a significant leadership failing. If you are out and about today doing what used to be called "management by wandering around" by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman, maybe an interesting question to ask one or two direct reports would be, "what would need to change for you to really be able to do your best here?" It may be such a novel question that it will take some probing to get a good response (it will take them time to feel safe enough to bring the coffee store conversation inside the organization), but what you are after is how work would need to be redesigned in the eyes of those who know it best.
And that last sentence is the big one: it means dropping any assumptions you may make that being boss conveys or presupposes heightened understanding of anything.
