The Always-Busy Manager
pretending to work has never paid off this well
There’s a certain kind of being you’ll find in almost every modern workplace. A creature so perfectly adapted to corporate survival that they’ve transcended the need for actual productivity.
I’m talking about the Always-Busy Manager.
A marvel of evolution who has discovered the ultimate workplace cheat code: looking incredibly busy while producing absolutely nothing of value.
And honestly? I’m allergic to them. Let me tell you what I’ve seen.
The art of invisibility
You know the type.
Always saying “Let me get back to you on that” or “I’ll check in with the team.”
Always “fully booked” or “back-to-back today.”
You’d think they were singlehandedly running the economy.
But here’s the beautiful irony: ask anyone on their team what their manager actually does, and you’ll get the same blank stare you’d see on someone asked to explain quantum physics using only interpretive dance.
“Rebecca? Oh, she’s… busy. Very busy. Always in meetings.”
What meetings? you might ask. Good question! How about the alignment sessions to prep for future alignment sessions. Strategic deep-dives that never actually hit bottom. And of course, they give them names so shiny you almost forget how empty they are; Thought Leadership Connect, Awareness Sync, or whatever else sounds important enough to avoid doing actual work.
Meanwhile, they’re busy telling everyone else what to do… without doing any of it themselves. It’s like being led by a never-ending Jira board with 300 tickets and no plan.
The More Meetings, The Less Work
Here’s the pattern I’ve seen:
The more meetings they have, the less useful they are.
It’s like their presence in a room makes everyone slower. Like anti-productivity.
But they’re proud of it.
They’ll tell you, with genuine pride, “I had twelve meetings today!” as if they’ve just completed a marathon. Meanwhile, their direct reports are drowning in actual work, wondering if their boss has been abducted by aliens or perhaps entered some kind of witness protection program for people who once knew how to do things.
The Delegation Masterclass
Their biggest skill? Passing the task to someone else immediately while still keeping the credit.
You’ll hear things like:
“Just looping you in on this!”
Which really means:
“I need you to do all the work while I take credit in the next meeting.”
They’ve turned delegation into an Olympic sport. Ask them a clear question, and they’ll talk in circles until someone else ends up doing the job.
The Inbox Theater Performance
And then there’s the classic excuse: the inbox.
“My email is totally out of control right now!” they’ll say, like it’s some badge of honor.
Really? Because the rest of us are also wading through digital hell, but we still manage to reply to things that matter. (fun fact: there are tools to help you manage and prioritise your mail) If your entire leadership presence hinges on claiming you missed an email, maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be leading.
And of course your inbox is a mess. You ask to be copied into every email just to feel involved. It’s not about helping. It’s about appearing important.
The Great Workplace Magic Trick
What we’re witnessing is perhaps the greatest magic trick in corporate history: the complete disappearance of accountability while maintaining maximum visibility. These managers have achieved something remarkable. They’ve become simultaneously essential and useless, irreplaceable and completely replaceable.
They’re like workplace ghosts, haunting the org chart but never quite materializing when you need them. They exist in a quantum state of being both incredibly busy and completely unproductive until observed directly, at which point they collapse into a pile of buzzwords and excuses about “competing priorities.”
Everybody knows
The most maddening part? Everyone knows. The teams know their manager adds about as much value as a chocolate teapot. The other managers know, because they’re all playing the same game. Even senior leadership probably knows, but they’re too busy with their own version of this performance to address it.
It’s like that fairy tale about the emperor’s new clothes, except in this version, everyone can see the emperor is naked, but we’ve all agreed to pretend his complete lack of contribution is somehow a sophisticated management strategy we’re too junior to understand.
The Question Nobody Asks
So here’s my humble suggestion for the next all-hands meeting: instead of talking about “efficiency gains” and “streamlining processes,” why don’t we ask the one question that could actually improve productivity overnight:
“What would happen if we removed a few layers of management?”
In most cases, the answer would be: nothing. Nothing except maybe fewer interruptions, fewer “quick syncs,” fewer decks about decks.
Maybe … and stay with me here… the real efficiency gain isn’t in streamlining teams under more managers, but in removing the ones who only manage the managing of management.
You know, like those parents who child-proof the entire house so obsessively that nothing can be touched, learned from, or experienced. Everything ends up stuck, sterile, suffocating. That's what over-management does to work.
And guess what? That safety net? It’s not safety. It’s just drag.
But what do I know? I’m just someone who thinks work should involve, you know, actually working…
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