Throwaway account to cover my tracks a bit.
I'm a volunteer for a non profit that works with mental health as part of a ragtag bunch of men who have been affected by mental health. I'm also a solo entrepreneur with a very 'get shit done' mentality in my own world. The latter doesn't always mesh well with the former, and it's causing me some frustation with how long things take to get done.
I report to a board of directors who aren't business owners, and they regard our organisation almost as a good cause whereas in reality it's a small business. There are donors (investors), customers (attendees) and staff (volunteers).
Without going into too many details, I've had to step back from some internal tasks since I was compensating for a director's lack of action / insight. I've done this for my own wellbeing, but I know ultimately sometimes things need to break before they come to light, and then they can be fixed.
I have no desire to cover for the ineffective director, and I'd like to avoid a personality conflict with them. I can split the person from the tasks (or lack of action / insight on the tasks), so I don't see any vendetta on the horizon, but I'm struggling with lack of practical experience here since I've been solo since 2006.
How do you deal with superiors at your organisation that appear to be without direction, strategy, awareness and action?
Thank you.
> in reality it's a small business
In your reality/mental model, not other people's.
That you have a functional/strategic view of a particular organization/situation- honed no doubt from other experiences unique to you- has nothing to do with the view/mental model that others in and around the organization have of the organization.
More critically, your view is no more valid than anyone else's view (and in functional terms, is less valid than the mental models of your superiors), and, you have almost no power to change other people's mental models.
This isn't a unique statement about you, it is just a universal truth.
In re:
> How do you deal with superiors at your organization that appear to be without direction, strategy, awareness and action?
Once you understand that all people in an organization are independent, autonomous entities with their own mental models, and therea are no magic buttons or injections that can change those mental models, it should become clear that the only way to engage and potentially to effect anything is to build relationships with people, With relationships, you start to understand what the mental models are of the other people in the organization, what is important to them, what is not important to them, and you and they can build a shared trust.
With superiors, this practice is sometimes called "managing up." It involves setting up conversations, asking questions, learning what's important to them in the context of the organization.
It may seem like there are people who lack direction/strategy/awareness/whatever. That is a failure of one's own perceptual machinery. They may not share your direction or priorities or whatever, but they very well have their own. Mental models that lack ambition are very often the result of learned helplessness (the causes of which especially in non-profits are myriad).
When there is sufficient understanding of their mental model, and trust around shared goals, one can present to them distillations of problems that are important to them, along with solutions or win/win framings of decisions or opportunities.
Understand what success looks like to other people, and then help them achieve it.
This applies not just to superiors but to all colleagues. Understanding what is important to other people and then applying your own initiative and capability to enable their success is the secret to happiness in life.