Little Things, Big Problem

(My coworker and I have been butting heads with our boss for over six months. We’re all highly-trained professionals who have worked at this company for several years. We’ve both talked to him directly about it, have met with HR on multiple occasions, and have brought it up to members of the executive team when nothing changed. One (out of many) of the big issues is that neither of us feels like my boss trusts us with anything; we have a daily status meeting that lasts for about an hour and is basically “what are you working on today? Ok, what are you working on today? Ok, this is what I’m working on and will be very busy. Do you have enough to do?” We finally get one of the executives to agree to regular meetings with all three of us to help smooth things over. The following happens at the end our first meeting with the CFO attending, which was productive.)

Boss: “Do you guys feel like the daily status meetings are helpful?”

Me: “No. They—“

Chief Finance Officer: “I’m sorry; let me ask this real quick. What’s the purpose of the daily meeting?”

Boss: “Well, originally it was to make sure that they got here on time. Then it turned into making sure they were optimizing their time properly and had enough to do.”

Chief Finance Officer: “Okay, let me stop you right there. That comes across as you not trusting them to be efficient and get their work done.”

Boss: “Well, how often should we have status meetings then?”

Me: “Once a week.”

Boss: “But then how do I get updates on the status of little things?”

Chief Finance Officer: “You walk over to them and say, ‘hey, how’s this project coming along?’”