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MY BOSS IS A MORON

STRATEGIES TO MANAGE UP AND THRIVE IN ANY WORKPLACE

BEN ASKINS

EBURY EDGE

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Introduction

If you are thinking about writing a book, I have a few observations that might help.

The first is that it is a lot harder than you might think. This may not be as much of a surprise to you as it was to me. I swaggered into the process. I couldn’t have been more confident. A whole year to write about a topic I release daily videos about? Absolute breeze.

I was so cocky I even tried to shorten the deadline my everpatient editor originally gave me before sheepishly returning, hat in hand, to ask for my original schedule back.

The second observation is that a combination of WhatsApp and spellcheck has completely ruined my understanding of how grammar works. Full stops and commas were fine, but I still have absolutely no idea when I am meant to use a semi-colon and developed an unhelpful tendency to throw one in every now and again just to make a paragraph feel fancier.

The final observation I would make is that when you start writing,

despite having every intention of trying to sound natural and easy to understand, you start reaching for words or phrases that you have never actually used in your adult life and only have a vague idea of what they mean. This is compounded by the fact that, because the writing process takes over a year, you slightly forget what you have written in earlier chapters.

It was this perfect storm that led to my first draft containing the phrase ‘pièce de résistance’ on no less than eight separate occasions despite having not once ever used those words in any other context.

This book has been one of the hardest challenges I have ever set out to accomplish. Not because I didn’t know what I wanted to write, but because this is such an enormous topic – and one that I have immersed myself in so thoroughly over the last couple of years – that trying to mention everything I wanted to include without requiring a whole trilogy of Lord of the Rings proportions was looking nearly impossible. But it was becoming increasingly obvious to me how important this topic was to address.

The world has never been less engaged with work. With postCovid productivity numbers trending ever lower and 24 per cent of people feeling like they are working for their worst boss ever, I don’t think the word ‘crisis’ is an exaggeration. This is made worse by the fact that for everyone dealt the hand of a bad boss is often offered only two pieces of advice: ‘suck it up and get on with it’, which, if you are part of a younger generation, might be allied with the added bonus of a story that starts with ‘back in my day . . . ’, or ‘go and work for yourself then’. Now, I will always encourage people to go down the entrepreneurial route if that is what they

want to do, but it is unrealistic to just expect everyone to have the resources or appetite to strike out on their own. Beyond just quitting and throwing in the towel, this book is all about the third way: how to make the best of a bad situation. This book will teach you how to manage a terrible boss and present you with tactics to mitigate your circumstances and allow you to give yourself the best possible chance of success.

It is worth spending a little time talking about why I felt like I was the right person for the job.

I have been an entrepreneur now for over ten years. I built my first business, a digital marketing agency, over nine years, opening offices in both London and New York. I sold the business at the end of 2021. Since then, I have gone on to found two new businesses: a green technology company called Gaia, and my content business called Benchmark.

In short, I have been hiring, firing, managing and leading people for over a decade. In that time, I have made every possible mistake you could imagine. Much of the contents of this book is based on things I did badly as well as the bits I managed to get right. I still cringe at some of those memories.

The first time I fired someone, I did it so badly and beat around the bush so much, she didn’t realise she was being fired – I had to book a second meeting to make it clear. One of the reasons I talk about the importance of management training is because of how much I know I needed it early on in my career.

But that’s not why I have written this book. The reason I feel I have the knowledge and insight to put digital pen to paper is that I have had the privilege of receiving over 200,000 boss stories

from my followers over the past couple of years through my social media channels. These stories come from every possible country, sector and demographic. They range from the completely ridiculous, to the everyday frustration. A lot of these stories I have shared on my channel, others I will share in this book, but the sheer scale of the data has allowed me to weave together a narrative that explains where we get it wrong, why so many bosses are making these mistakes, and what the potential solutions are when you feel you are badly managed.

There are four outcomes I wanted to achieve by writing My Boss Is a Moron.

The first is to let you know that you are not alone. Having a terrible boss can be one of the most isolating feelings in the world. Having no one to turn to at work can feel nothing short of devastating and can make it really challenging to even get out of bed to face the day. Having a bad boss is something everyone will experience at some point in their careers.

The second outcome is to help. And I mean really help. Not just to give you a sympathetic ear but to provide genuine advice and a blueprint for what you can do. We will cover the tips and tricks you can use to manage up and handle a bad boss, but we will also break down the situations you can improve and those where you should be thinking about moving on to a new job. One of the most heartbreaking discoveries I have made since starting my social media channels is not the people who have had terrible bosses, but the ones who have had terrible bosses and didn’t even realise it.

The third outcome is to provide advice on how to run a

successful team or company. Very few people set out to be a bad boss or awful manager. Of course they don’t, that would be sociopathic. Instead, all these issues come from three main areas: a lack of awareness, a lack of communication and a lack of training.

Even the most selfish managers will recognise that a motivated, engaged and incentivised team will always outperform a team that is falling apart and quitting in droves. The commercial upside is clear for all to see. This is one of those rare moments in life where we are looking at a genuine win-win scenario where managers can do the right thing with their team that also directly benefits them.

The final outcome is to provide some light entertainment and to remind you all that work can be fun. That is not to undermine some of the truly terrible experiences that people go through, but I think one of the reasons that management and the principles of it are so underutilised at companies is because a lot of the subject matter is dull. One of the first things I said to my editor was that I would never write a stuffy manual full of long lists of the dos and don’ts of management. It just isn’t my style. Learning is only possible through enjoyment. A huge priority of mine was to write a book that people could read, learn from and have fun with.

I was once asked what I thought the best trait in a manager was, and I surprised everyone by saying I thought ‘self-deprecation’ was such an underrated quality. A boss who can take a joke is not only confident enough in their own position to laugh at themselves, but they are also much more likely not to sweat the small stuff.

So much conflict, stress and arguments are based on the smallest and tiniest of issues but, because some people are incapable of processing or handling them, they ruin the working lives of other

people over it. ‘Will this be important in six months’ time?’ is a useful barometer for what matters, and so few conflicts at work pass that test.

This book might not be what you expect. There will be some questionable metaphors, some undeniably cheesy humour, and some ridiculous stories. But the pièce de résistance of this book is that little bit of extra help to handle the absolute cretin the gods of business have bestowed upon you and your career.

1 JOB DESCRIPTIONS

Boss: Alright mate, if you get some spare time today I need you to head downstairs and have a bit of a tidy up. We need to make space for some new shelving units.

Employee: Hey, I don’t mind doing that but can we have a chat when you get back? I don’t mind helping out but you hired me as a graphic designer and I’m getting pulled into a lot of these odd jobs.

Boss: I told you to expect some duties outside of the job spec mate. What did you expect?

Employee: I know, but I thought you meant sitting in on meetings, or making slide decks or something, not building IKEA furniture and tidying up the storage room.

What do you do for work?’ should not be a difficult question to answer.

‘How big is the universe?’ Now that is a tricky one. ‘How many people are there in the world called Brian?’ Almost impossible. But asking what your job is? That doesn’t sound like it should be anything but simple. As straightforward as telling someone your name or age.

Unfortunately, the gem that is modern working life has made

job descriptions a worthy entry into the ‘it isn’t that hard but somehow we make it so much trickier than it needs to be’ category.

If someone asks what you do, you rarely have the time to read out a list of various duties and, if we are being honest with ourselves, it’s not something you have any interest in doing either. The whole attitude of ‘I deal with enough work at actual work, the last thing I want is to be chatting shop when I am not being paid to do so’ is never more prevalent than in forced social interaction.

A job title solves both those problems. It doesn’t tell you everything, but it gives you the gist, which, in the majority of conversations, is more than enough.

If your interlocutor is someone who requires a little more information because they are genuinely interested or, more likely, you’re in a social situation neither of you can escape and are politely feigning enthusiasm, there is another layer below that of job title. This is called a job description. Broadly speaking, a list of duties and job requirements that you actually do during work hours and is often used as the basis for hiring you in the first place. Again, very, very simple.

And yet, for something so easy, we sure do seem to mess up in spectacular ways. I am bombarded on social media with stories of people disagreeing with either the company they are working for, or a business they are in the process of joining, about what it is exactly that they should be doing with their day. These range from minor squabbles to genuine contract disputes.

A good example of this latter category was the woman who messaged me telling me about her husband who applied for a job as a gardener. Halfway through the interview they informed him

that he may need to take on some of the lifeguarding duties at the pool. Just to be clear, we are not talking maintenance or cleaning duties, we are talking about being an actual lifeguard. When he pointed out that he wasn’t qualified to do this, their response was ‘all you have to do is to watch people swim’.

Needless to say he didn’t take the job, which was a shame because it meant I never did find out if this company found the pruning Aquaman they were looking for.

I have hired a lot of people throughout my career, and I have spent a great deal of time talking to people who have had issues with this side of running a business and it all seems to come down to companies and business leaders genuinely not understanding why having a proper job title attached to a job description that, firstly, makes sense and, secondly, can be accurately referred to is crucial to having a satisfied team which, in turn, leads to a more successful and profitable business.

This last point is especially relevant because if you ask any CEO in the world right now, ‘Would you like your team to be more motivated and working harder?’, they are never going to say no. Yet, too often these basic principles of running a successful company are viewed with the same disdain that people usually reserve for cat owners who take their pets for a walk.

Of course, we are not helping ourselves as we have a raft of job titles that are either too broad or, in some circumstances, don’t actually mean anything. I have been in business for 12 years and I still have no idea what a business analyst does. It seems to be one of those essential roles that covers nearly every sector and industry and yet no one seems to, a) be able to name anyone they

know who is one and, b) have even the faintest idea of what they do, and I am including in that list several business leaders who employ them.

Alongside this, you have one of my real pet peeves, the job titles that have clearly just been made up, usually by a boss who is trying to be ‘cool’ but having about as much success as I did when I decided to try hair gel for the first time. A good recent example of this is someone whose CV said that he was ‘head of good times’ at a tech company. Leaving aside the fact that this sounds like the Facebook status of someone whose entire life peaked in high school, I feel like I have to point out that ‘head of bad times’ would actually be more impressive. Anyone can run a team when everyone is happy, it is when the chips are down that you want people to step up.

There have been others that have crossed my desk such as ‘digital prophet’ and ‘chief troublemaker’ but the one that annoyed me the most was a recent one. It hacked me off so much, that I went back and rewrote this chapter just to include it. It was a job spec that boasted the job title of ‘growth ninja’.

This had me gritting my teeth not just because the name is idiotic (though it is), but because ninjas, by definition, are supposed to be stealthy. To put them in charge of growth, which is meant to be one of the louder roles in a business, is just irritating. ‘Growth DJ ’ would genuinely make more sense.

The main danger of ludicrous job titles and incomplete job specs, is people end up doing a role that is a million miles away from what they are supposed to be doing, leading to boredom if it is offering no challenge, and stress and panic if it is too much of a challenge. Plus, more often than not, the increase in stress

and panic seems to rarely equate to better salary. This inevitably leads to resignations, increasing the pressure on the team that still remains. It’s also ordinarily accompanied by a team member from a certain generation complaining about how Gen Zs just don’t know what a hard day’s work looks like.

The reality is that job titles and job descriptions are so much more important than the average boss realises. For one thing, they are often the first encounter you might have with a company and, identifying which ones are worth pursuing and which ones should make you run for the hills is one of the best ways to ensure you don’t end up having to send me screenshots to read out on social media further down the line.

Job descriptions can typically be broken down into three main sections. The first is the ‘About the Company’ section which tells you about the broader business you are joining. The second section lists the core requirements of the role, breaking down, in theory, exactly what you will be doing in the job. And finally you have the required skills section – i.e. what you need to have in your back pocket in order to give this role a fair crack.

All of these can cause frustrations by the bucket-load so we will be examining what you should be looking out for that indicates whether the company might be worth joining and which ones have raised the red flag banners and declared war on basic competence.

About the company

How, in all that is holy, do people mess this bit up? All they have to do is provide a little bit of background on the company, what

they are trying to do as an organisation over the next few years, and describe the type of people that they are looking to try and recruit. And yet the sheer number of companies and bosses who fall at the very first challenge wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Squid Game.

I think the simplicity of that task is part of the issue. It feels like such an easy task that people don’t spend that little bit of time actually thinking about it. For one thing, it is nearly always copied and pasted from previous job descriptions with people rarely bothering to read whether it requires updating since the original conception or, even worse, as one company I spoke to the other day confessed to, plainly stolen from a competitor. I know this because they forgot to swap out the competitor’s name. This is not the sign of someone who considers this an important part of the recruitment process.

Companies often also fill this section of a job description with phrases that managers think sound great but are ultimately meaningless. ‘Solutions provider’ or ‘thinking outside the box’ are particularly popular at the moment but I saw a gardening store talking about requiring someone who can ‘handle a highpressure environment’. With the greatest respect in the world to anyone who works in a gardening store, what is the highpressure environment you are worried about?

It sounds like I am laying this all on a bit thick and making a bit of a meal of this, but the ‘About Us’ section is a genuinely good indicator of how seriously a company takes things. If a company doesn’t treat it with care, then there will be other areas that are equally half-baked or rushed and an early warning sign

that this is not a company you want to commit your working week to.

What you are looking for is a nod to the company’s history but with a clear mission. Alongside that, you want a couple of sentences on the type of culture that you will be joining, the type of personalities who do well and the brand values that the company stands by. A good company will be proud of its culture and will want to get that across.

List of duties

TARGETS

If the ‘About’ section is the appetiser and the ‘Required Skills’ are the cheese and cigars at the end, then the ‘List of Duties’ is the meat and two veg. The main course that will define whether you give the meal a positive review or not.

It is also the easiest part of the job spec to interpret and the most accurate when it comes to predicting whether this job or company is the right option for you.

We will get into the specifics of the phrasing of it all shortly, but there are two main parts that you should immediately be on the lookout for. The first is that there needs to be an achievable list of targets and duties. The second is that they need to be trackable, something that you can pick up again in 12 months’ time and very easily work out if it has been a successful year or not.

Let’s start with the first point. The most obvious reason why this is important is that you need to know what you will be asked to do