It Doesn't Take a Wizard to Build a Better Boss

Welcome to the Land of Oz -- and a career path that looks like the Yellow Brick Road. Dorothy's adventure, it turns out, is the perfect metaphor for a world of work where almost everyone's boss is either unintelligent, indecisive, or irascible. I know this from studying bosses in hundreds of companies -- and from my own career. Based on my experience, all bad bosses fall into three groups: the boss with no brains; the boss with no courage; and the boss with no heart. In other words, like most people, I've spent my career working with the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man.

I started down this road in 1978 when I joined the Harvard Business School faculty. One of my first assignments was to teach MBA students about leadership. This seemed to me completely backward. After all, few of us ever achieve the exalted position of leader; all of us find ourselves at one time or another in the role of follower.

So for the past 18 years, I've made it my business to spend much of my time studying the accomplishments of the bossed rather than the boss. In the process, I've discovered some truths at the heart of the relationship between the boss and the bossed:

• Everybody hates the boss. Maybe not all the time or every day -- but at one time or another, everybody goes home from work, sits down to dinner, and complains bitterly about what's wrong with the boss.
• Everybody complains about the same things: The boss doesn't listen. The boss doesn't offer encouragement. The boss doesn't recognize superior effort. Whatever the specific language, the theme is always the same: there's something wrong with the boss.

Along with these universal truths, I've discovered a number of absolutely pragmatic -- and surprisingly counterintuitive -- conclusions:

• You cannot change the boss. Everyone tries; it never works. Complaining about the boss won't make the boss a better boss. It will make you a bitter employee.
• You cannot simply adapt yourself to whatever the boss wants. This old-fashioned, 1950s "Company Man" view of the world is obsolete. The world moves too fast for sycophants.
• Nor can you declare yourself empowered and become boss-free. Sorry. Hierarchy is here to stay; the boss is still the boss -- and often for good reasons.

All of this suggests a hard fact of business life: there is no wizard who can build you a better boss. You, however, can build a better you. You can sharpen your skills, advance your career, develop your character -- and do it by learning from your boss's foibles and frailties. In other words, as unconventional as it may seem, with few exceptions, the worse you think the boss is, the better the opportunity is for you.

Ultimately The Wizard of Oz is about two things, the same two things much of work life is about: asking the right questions and taking the situation in hand. These are the keys to building a better you -- whether or not you improve your boss.

"I won't try to manage things, because I can't think." -- The Scarecrow

I. The Scarecrow: The Boss Does the Talking, You Do the Thinking

How stupid was Steve DeSimone?

The year was 1970 and antagonism was high between college-aged Vietnam War protestors and middle-aged law-and-order cops. Steve drove a red GTO and the cops were constantly giving him tickets for seemingly minor infractions.

One day, I walked out with him into the parking lot. "Steve," I told him. "I think I've figured out why the cops are after you."

I pointed to his vanity license plate that read "SDS," for Steve DeSimone -- or Students for a Democratic Society, the antiwar student group.

DeSimone was my boss; he directed a state youth opportunities commission, a post he'd gotten for one reason: his dad ran a major union. I was his deputy. It was my second real job; I was all of 19. The work: design a first-of-its-kind statewide employment program for teenagers and get a federal grant to finance it.

On my first day at work, I discovered that Commissioner DeSimone would be around for only two days before taking two weeks off. So I went to him with a rookie question: "What do you want me to do?"

His answer: "Two things. First, get that grant. Second, get me good press."

That was it. DeSimone might have been stupid, but at least his goals were clear. In that instant, I recognized that I had a choice. I could either decide to do nothing more, sit around and whine about my boss, or I could make him look good in exchange for designing and running the whole job program myself.

At the time, it struck me that making my dumb boss look smart was a very small price to pay for all the running room I was being given. Apparently my predecessor hadn't seen it that way. He'd left the post in a funk.