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When asked, in a recent survey, to say which word best described their company, most British managers replied ‘mismanaged’. It’s human nature to think we can do the job better than those in charge. Sadly, in business, it is often true.

What causes this situation? That, too, can be answered in a single word: Neglect. Children suffer from it, marriages often suffer from it but employees suffer from it more than anyone else. Why do senior managers neglect their employees? They are not stupid. They must know that neglect breeds dissatisfaction, contempt, hatred. So why do they do it?

The answer they will give is ‘lack of time’. What is worse, they believe it. It is total rubbish.  You might just as well say that when driving a car you don’t have time to look at the road ahead. There is plenty of time – or, rather, there would be if endless, pointless meetings and useless, wordy reports were stopped. Both promote lies; both destroy communications – the very thing they are supposed to build; both leave those who are bound up in them exhausted, frustrated and bored. So bored, in fact, that there’s a game called Bullshit Bingo for you to play to while away the hours of monotonous meetings.

How can you help yourself and, more importantly, motivate yourself in this apparently dire situation?

First of all, fight it. Not rudely or belligerently but politely and persistently. Ask to be excused meetings because of other work. Or ask if you can attend only a short part of the meeting – ‘the bit that matters’. Both requests, even if refused, will begin to concentrate the mind of your manager, especially when you ask for the twentieth time. Leave a meeting when you think it’s going nowhere – very politely, but leave. A strange thing will start to happen. You will find that the important part of the meeting is either assembled into one section of it, or the minutes will tell you all you want to know, in a fraction of the time it took to hold the meeting.

Second, write much briefer reports. Show the essential figures, explain any that look odd, leave the rest out. Your manager is (presumably) numerate. If he sees the figures he doesn’t need you to repeat them in the text. In my own business I banned most written reports and just looked at the figures. I even went further than that and had the figures that mattered – variances from budget – extracted by the computer so that I didn’t have to look at the rest.

Third, take the initiative and talk to your manager. Bother him, politely. Say you have some issues you’d like to chat about and get his advice on. Ask him questions about where the business is going. Take an interest in his problems as well as yours. Make the running to set up a dialogue. No agendas, no minutes, no formality. Just a chat. Do it often, preferably once a week, never less than once a fortnight. If necessary do it on the ‘phone – half an hour spent chatting is worth six hours of meetings, a time-saving of over 90%. That’s an offer nobody can refuse.

Easy? No, of course not. If it was, everyone would already have done it. Worthwhile? l promise you that when you have established the pattern of informal chats, fewer meetings and very brief reports, you will feel like a bird freed from a cage. You will stretch your wings; you will see the business objectively. Most of all, you will be in charge. There’s no greater feeling.

Next time: ‘what if the boss doesn’t play?’