How to deal with working together on a time-sensitive project with a more senior guy who is very indecisive?
Apologies for the rant below.
TLDR: I (investment associate at a PE fund) am currently staffed on a time-sensitive project with a director who is an absolute nightmare to work with (insanely indecisive, overly structured, and painfully slow). Others that have worked with him have complained as well, but the partners have not yet caught wind of this issue. How do I nudge him to become more efficient in a way that "respects his seniority" (i.e. without hurting his ego) or, alternatively, how do I escalate this towards the partners without being perceived as "out of line"?
On paper, he seems experienced and smart enough to do the job. However, his way of working is not generating any progress as he lacks leadership skills, is very risk-averse and has trouble taking ANY decisions.
He tries to validate every minor decision point with the partner (who is on holiday by the way) and constantly creates new workstreams, schedules new meetings and finds new problems to any solutions. A "quick 5 min call" will turn into a 1 hour monologue rambling session. On a regular basis, he also needlessly involves our lawyers, who are of course very happy to bill us $1,000+ an hour to talk to him. At one point, he was contemplating to mandate an investment bank on this project, which is even more irrelevant. It seems that, in order to appear "busy" to the partner, he is throwing all kinds of things at the wall, hoping that something will stick.
As he is doing everything in his power to postpone or outsource the decision making, the inevitable outcome will be that the partner takes over the wheel at some point, but there is simply no time left for that. I don't want to bypass him completely, but I need to do something because this project is going south and I am not going to take the blame for it.
If he won't be a leader, you need to be a leader. Tell him that you have a plan for you yourself to work more efficiently and am sharing it with him for FYI only, not for him to opine. Create a work plan, describe to him what you are going to do and how you are going to get it done. Tell him every decision you will need to make, that you will make a decision, note your assumptions, and give him an hour period after notification during waking hours to "opt-out". If you worry that this will put you back into the same stalling pattern with him opting out, just tell him if he opts out, you will expect a counter-decision. He may not like it but you need to get the ship moving.
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