How to Babysit a Manager Without Getting Fired
I work under a manager who is consistently unprepared and makes basic mistakes that I end up fixing. Meetings are chaotic, priorities change constantly, and it is starting to reflect on the whole team.
Should I try to ride this out, go to my manager’s boss, or start looking for a new job?
Drowning In Shifting Priorities,
Spreadsheet Lifeboat Crew
You’re not trapped under an incompetent manager. You’re standing next to a beautiful, self-operating career catapult that keeps misfiring in public. And you’re over here asking if you should wear a helmet or leave the carnival.
Meetings are chaotic, priorities change constantly, and it’s starting to reflect on the whole team because your manager isn’t just unprepared—they’re a recurring organizational incident. The real question isn’t whether you can “ride this out.” It’s how long you want to keep being the unofficial clean-up crew for someone else’s mess.
Here’s the principle: stop fixing everything like you’re the responsible adult in a room full of toddlers with admin access. Fix just enough that the place doesn’t catch fire, but leave the scorch marks.
When someone asks why it smells like smoke, you calmly explain that you noticed the smoke and contained it, because you’re a professional and your manager is more of a weather event.
Now for meetings. You take the notes. You send the recap. You “helpfully” translate the nonsense into actual decisions and deadlines, and you CC the people who matter. Not because you’re nice, but because paper trails are the adult version of a chokehold.
Then you do the soft takeover. You quietly become the point of contact for the real work, the real answers, the real timelines, the real everything. Your manager can keep hosting the circus; you’re building the train tracks underneath it.
And yes, you sprinkle a little strategic fog for entertainment and leverage. Nothing illegal, nothing obvious, just enough ambiguity that when your manager tries to claim credit, the room collectively squints like they just got handed a menu in a foreign language. The goal is simple: make them obsolete without ever saying the word.
Going to their boss is fine, but don’t do it like a tattletale begging for rescue. Do it like an investor presenting a hostile-but-polite acquisition: here’s what’s breaking, here’s what it’s costing, here’s what you’ve already been doing to keep the ship floating, and here’s what happens if nobody changes anything. If you do it right, you won’t be jumping overboard. You’ll be handing out life jackets.
– Uncle Bobby