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I just started a new job and have seriously talked to my boss 3 times in 8 weeks. It seems weird to me as I used to be mid-senior level and met with my CIO weekly... Now I report to someone who reports to the CIO and never talk to her.
Don't think it's that uncommon in larger companies. Smaller companies, I think that would be out of the ordinary. Of course it depends on the company culture as well.
I guess the question is do you need to talk to your boss more often?
I like to... I mean, I'm in the dark more or less. What's scary is that a few people have gotten fired and were never warned. These are mid-career professionals earning $70k+ per year. It makes me worry that perhaps my boss isn't good at outlining her expectations, and that's why she fires so many people.
I talk to my "lead" on a daily basis on the shop floor... but as far as the plant manager and general manager goes I don't have a need or desire to talk to them.
You may want to request a weekly status meeting with her - its always better to stay in touch with your boss. You can drive the agenda in terms of providing her a weekly status update. This will give you the exposure to her so you can ask her questions and hopefully become more informed.
3 times in 8 weeks is not much contact. Good luck and definitely think about taking the initiative here.
If this is a larger company, I wouldn't go in there empty handed. I would go in there crisply, with something to show as a basis for discussion.
E.g. - you've been on the job 8 wks. Here are the processes that relate to your job, based on your observation. If these are the processes, here is how you are thinking to streamline them. Wait for a response.
This is not brown nosing. This is an attempt to draw her into a conversation about her burning platform. Could be she was a techie newly promoted to mgt and simply doesn't care about the management part of the job. If so, you can bet your bottom dollar that she WILL care about the techie part of the job.
Or, she may be hopping to the frenzied and sometimes conflicting directives from her bosses, and has no time to do anything, and no time to draw you into problem solving. As you know, CIOs are frequently perceived as necessary evils by the line organizations - there is no input from a CIO that makes their lives easier.
How good are you at Information Assurance? is this a way you could make her life easier? Take the initiative to review the DR plan?
Ramdom firrings are not a good thing. They are a way for a manager to demonstrate that he's doing SOMETHING. It would be to your benefit to know where the balls are dropping.
See that's the thing - At every job I've been at I've moved to be one of my directors top lieutenants (for lack of a better word) very quickly. My best thought is that she just has poor time management - I know her background and this is her first job (and it's high up) outside of an art career. It's just bizarre.
I have tried to go in for status meetings, but it always turns into "I haven't heard anything bad about you." And not much else. I had 4 direct reports at my last job, if they ever cared to take the initiative to come to me about their performance (I had 2 technical writers, a SQL guy, and tester working for me) I would have told them what's going right or wrong at any given time.
Grr, I'm frustrated, the worst part is that I don't trust anyone at my company so I can't even figure out what normal is, for the time being, I guess I'm basically on my own.
So she's disoriented and may not have a clue. She got the yob through connections.
Maybe you could become her mentor. Help her make sense of it. By framing things out for her, one area at a time. Put it into a framework like "here's what I see, here are the facts, here are the similarities and differences to previous orders of operation with which I've worked, here's how the pulse of this kind of yob usually goes. Based on my experience, here is what will be coming up next, and I'd move to head it off at the pass by doing Y".
Maybe translate IT into the functional areas, for which it is the structural support. Teach her the functional areas of a business through the IT underpinning.
That's all I've got. Honestly, I'm scratching my head and it's no wonder that you're scratching yours.
Wishing you the very best.
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