To find it hard to work with people like this?

[Clementinecerise]

I mean people at work who over plan EVERYTHING and who has must have a strategy or planning document for every single bloody action down to how many sheets of toilet paper they’re going to use that day in the office.

My current boss is like this. I work for a medium sized national charity. I floated the idea of an evening event for potential donors last summer. It will not have huge costs attached as we have a great venue so just catering. We have the budget.

As soon as I suggested it she asked me to put together an event plan, which I did. Since then I swear to god the plan has been discussed and analysed by everyone down to the bloody cleaner. It’s a simple concept. We have done these types of event before. They tend to be successful. I’ve had to update the plan at least ten times. Every time it’s ‘Can you write a summary of how this fits into our strategic aims?’ (to raise money?) Can you add in a couple of paragraphs about what we are hoping to achieve with this? (Done). And umpteen other questions. Every time I update it she will schedule a meeting at least a month away with yet another person in the organisation to ‘get their view’ which inevitably ends with more changes. A year has now passed, we had a meeting about it today, and she’s scheduled another fucking meeting with another person to discuss.

This is just one example. Everything - even a simple bloody meeting with a potential donor - has to be analysed and planned to within an inch of its life. Internal presentations to update the rest of the team need at least two planning meetings and a planning document and absolutely everything we do has to be scrutinised as to ‘how it aligns with our vision’.

I think it’s important to plan and am always well prepared for everything I do but I find her approach so painful. I have worked with people like this before and they kill productivity and progress IMO.

I also think people hide behind this stuff to avoid doing their actual job. I had a fundraising manager who spent nine months writing a strategy. Nothing else was done in that time. No meetings with donors, no new business development. Just the bloody strategy. When he finally produced it everyone read it, said how great it was and it was filed away. He’s now gone to another organisation where I bet he’s doing the same.

Planning is great and important but bloody hell some people overdo it.

Please hit me with your tales of similar colleagues!

Not interested in snark about how I’m obviously not very good at my job or similar btw, find another post if you’re looking for an argument.

I hear exactly this from people working in the charity sector which is why I couldn’t.

Have encountered elements of it in big public sector

I also think people hide behind this stuff to avoid doing their actual job.

I think it can be anxiety, depression and burnout related, or also job protection.

mind you I now work for a tiny start up where there are hardly any systems and that can be murderous

That’s true of public sector and it isn’t as bad as the charity sector for pointless planning

there may be bits of the public sector like this but the bits I’ve worked in are the opposite - people pulling things together in record time and hoping for the best.

can you go above her head to her boss or to someone else at her level and find a way to drop into the conversation that you’ve just lost ANOTHER potential donor because of the delays to XYZ project and ask for their advice on speeding up the process?

This thread has reminded me a a colleague I used to work with who spent ages writing a volunteering strategy for a housing association and never actually recruited any volunteers. He was certainly someone who just enjoyed galavanting about to meetings and never wanted to get his hands dirty.

Practical suggestion for working with these types! In your first proposal put together a RACI matrix. Get her to agree to that and then make her stick to it. It won’t eliminate the need for consensus but it will cut down. Make sure you start out heavy with the “informed” category.

If it makes you feel any better all of those colleagues she’s pulling in are probably thinking “WTF, why am I being pulled into this?”

Sadly, this may be the only option. She’s not going to change

Wtf is a 'pre meet'? Is it a meeting about having a meeting?

Pre-meets make sense in some circumstances. I have a pre-meet tomorrow with colleagues to agree on what exactly we all say to a client. We need all four of us there, but what everyone says about their part has to make sense as part of the whole.

I worked with someone like this until very recently. She failed extended probation and was sacked. There were numerous reasons behind that she had a similar style which annoyed everyone who had to work with her

I'm not sure how much of it was about being controlling and how much about anxiety but it was intolerable. Not sure what to suggest, if it was a manager I think I'd need to move on.

That sounds like total tiMe wasting. They are wasting the charities money by spending all this unnecessary time on things. Making a job out of nothing basically. It should t be allowed

Yes, they can normally be an email. They're never an email.

It basically turns an hour meeting into 2 hours - 30 mins to talk about the meeting you’re going to have, an hour meeting and then 30 mins to talk about the meeting you had.

And don’t get me started on team meetings. They are the bane of my life. I have been investigating going freelance so that I would never have to go to one of those fuckers again.

The thing is she does have a valid job. She’s a senior fundraiser. She could be out meeting new donors and developing new relationships. She doesn’t like doing that kind of thing though. She’s much happier at her desk writing pointless planning documents.

I'm sorry to laugh but this is outrageous. You write really well. Really made me laugh. Sorry. I know it's not supposed to.

I don't know how you stand it. I'd talk to her manager. Before that I'd have my CV out there, looking.

FAQ:
"You are not being unreasonable, over complicating situations, you could have had the event twice by now and raised further funds without all the needless faffing."

Exactly. Unfortunately this ethos is so engrained I fear any attempt by OP ti change it will just result in her being disliked.

"and it's making my brain turn into a boiled egg. "

Oh this is bringing me back. I worked in recruitment for decades; fast paced, results driven.

Then I went to work for a global consulting firm. It was the maddest place ever. Nothing got done. People endlessly sending on a deck (what???) instead of answering my question in the real life question we were actually having - they could have answered it in the time it took them to say they were going to send the deck, bizarre projects involving key words, lengthy delays in the hiring 'process' (lol) while committees discussed which channel to attach a candidate to.

Nothing happened. Nobody got hired because they were inevitably lost to a competitor after waiting months and months for next round of interview or job offers.

They are a globally recognised organisation who advise companies in how to be efficient but have no cohesive systems in their own corporate functions. My salary was a problem every single month.

The oddest working experience I've ever had and yet eveyone in there trotted out lines like "when you're part of this organisation you're expected to bring your A-game" or "we work hard, we play hard". They all loved to brag about the mad hours they worked. It screamed inefficiency to me, plain and simple.

I used to entertain myself but taking four week long periods of different extremes; working manically and efficiently then doing SFA. As expected, there was no difference in the outcome and nobody notices.

I still suspect we were part of some giant human experiments - little rats being given pointless tasks to keep them busy while we were being observed.

When I resigned they pleaded with me to stay. I had delivered zilch.

I'd guess neither work at all to be honest. Or if they do have a job, they are daft people like ops manager, waste time constantly.

My manager is a micro manager, sort of like this. But we get it on process documents, EVERYTHING must have a process document. And he'll say 'just spend 5 mins on it, doesn't need much detail', promptly forget that when he reviews it, rips it to shreds and wants all little details, including what buttons to click, and screenshots.

We spend more time documenting than we do doing work... And then he wonders why we do nothing.

He also expects a meeting every day to ask us what we are working on or to discuss problems. But he will then take over the meeting to discuss something 'important' which isn't important in the slightest, and then be like why aren't you fixing the other problems? WE CANT BECAUSE YOU WONT SHUT THE FUCK UP!

I am going to crack one day and scream at him, if he doesn't trust me to do my job, do it your fucking self. And good luck when you can't even use our systems anymore because you've been a yes man to senior management for too long and know nothing anymore.

I could have written this.

I work for a med sized charity. I have targets. I have freedom to reach those targets however I like (Within law and charity regulation/best practice obvs!).

I wouldn't reach my targets if I spent all my time planning. And I wouldn't get job satisfaction.

There's an element of admin and planning to keep the role effective. And if our service delivery teams are required to risk assess, plan, budget etc then of course I should too.

And all teams need a healthy mix of detail people and ideas people. But she seems to be holding things back which imo is unforgivable in a fundraising role.

OP, you sound like a great fundraiser. Get a new job where your creativity and 'can do' attitude will be valued

Argh, this is so relatable. I actually quit a job over this a few years ago. My current boss is brilliant, I tell him what I want to do and he just says "go for it". Speeds everything up so much.

I think it happens because of a lack of confidence. People want a lengthy paper trail to cover their arses if anything goes wrong.

I work in the private sector and my manager is like that. I've lost track of the amount of projects that have got forgotten about because the planning and approval phase was so long that we ended up forgetting about them. It's frustrating and makes the job boring. I'm in fact moving to another company soon

She needs that information for reporting to the funder and for fundraising bids. It's easier to get you to write it so she can file and pull it up later than dig around for the projects and write the blurbs herself.

Planning is good. It saves time throughout the process. I agree with them. You can also learn from the plan after the event. It's all very useful for monitoring purposes.

I work in the CS and this bureaucracy is all over the place. Such a waste of time and money.

This.

Also - this is how humans create work. If everyone just got on with things I swear our productivity as a nation would skyrocket. In my experience men are far worse for this than women, it’s so macho to make hard work out of everything.

100% hate this! 20 minute VIDEO call on a gift for a colleague leaving, 10minutes spent on the TEXT to go in flipping card… drives me insane…