Preventing Bypass of a Director’s Authority

❓ Question

I am a new Director in a relatively small but very diverse governmental agency. We have about 200 staff but a lot of business units with very specialized work. I have been in my role for over 3 months and I am struggling. Most of my team has been with the organization longer than I have. Several of them have been here years. The challenge that I struggle with is that I am very much an outsider. A lot of work, tasks and projects involve my team but I rarely am looped in on the work. People will go around me and request work be done by my managers without notifying me or even asking if those managers have the bandwidth to do it. My managers often don’t tell me everything that they are involved in on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

When I appeal to my executive leadership for support, I get lip service as they are some of the biggest offenders. I will often sit in meetings with my leadership and my managers and they are all talking about projects that I have no knowledge of at all. When I ask why I wasn’t looped in, I am told that they really know the people involved and felt comfortable going that route.

I have no urge to micro-manage or be told of every task but when new work is being assigned to my team without my knowledge, that is disrespectful to me. I have no idea what to do or how to course correct. This is driving a wedge between me and one of my managers as she commonly takes on new tasks without telling me and then complains that I get frustrated when she finally says something about the work.

Any thoughts you have would be appreciated.

💡 Response by Solia‑AI

You’re facing a relationship-driven culture that routinely bypasses formal roles, eroding your visibility and your ability to manage capacity. You can’t stop informal networks, but you can convert them into transparent, capacity-aware flow. Anchor on three pillars: clarity (what comes in, who decides), covenant (explicit working agreements), and consequence (gentle but firm redirection and data-backed accountability). Start with a short pilot that creates a single intake, a shared work register, and weekly commitment reviews. Use early data to secure leadership endorsement and coach your managers on boundary-setting scripts.

Detailed synthesis

Begin with visibility before enforcement. Stand up a shared intake and work register within two weeks: a single alias or form (e.g., agency-intake@… or a simple ticket in a tool you already have) that captures new requests, requester, due date, estimated effort, and sponsoring executive. Pair it with a live “commitments register” your managers update weekly. Set a clear service promise: all new asks get a response within one business day with status (accepted, queued, or needs reprioritization). Announce this as a pilot to make executive priorities land faster and with fewer surprises, not as a power grab.

Secure a minimal covenant. Propose a one-page working agreement to your leadership: net-new work to your units is acknowledged only after intake confirmation; no commitments beyond a modest threshold (e.g., >4 hours or cross-team impacts) without director review; and a 15-minute weekly readout in leadership where you summarize your portfolio, risks, and trade-offs. Ask for a 60-day endorsement. Frame it as risk control and capacity stewardship for their goals.

Equip managers to redirect gracefully without burning bridges. Provide two scripts:

1. “Thanks for the request. To make sure we meet your timeline, please CC agency-intake@… so our director can confirm capacity and priority within 24 hours.”
2. “Happy to explore—subject to capacity confirmation in tomorrow’s standup. I’ll revert after we log it.”

Make it easy by auto-adding the intake alias when managers reply. In your team norms, set: no unilateral commitments above the threshold; all requests logged within 24 hours; weekly 20-minute one-on-ones focused on upcoming commitments, not status minutiae.

Coach the manager where tension exists. In a candid one-on-one, name the pattern and its impact, seek her perspective, then co-create guardrails: what she can greenlight solo (e.g., emergencies, tiny tasks), what she must log immediately, and when to escalate. Agree on a weekly “commitments brief” she sends you (three bullets: new asks, risks, and help needed). Reinforce with positive recognition when she uses the new flow; if bypassing persists, document and move to a performance expectation tied to the working agreement.

Build alliances and value externally. Do a brief listening tour with frequent requesters and two executive sponsors. Ask what success looks like for them this quarter and show how the intake plus register will protect their critical deadlines. Publish a simple service catalog with SLAs and a priority ledger that names the current top five agency priorities affecting your team. Invite leaders to explicitly swap priorities when new urgent asks appear; make the trade-offs visible, not personal.

Instrument and report. For 4–6 weeks, track new requests, cycle time to acknowledgment, capacity vs demand, and “surprise work” (arrived outside intake). Share a concise dashboard at leadership: wins enabled, risks avoided, and the cost of bypass (over-commit, delays). Use data to tighten the covenant: convert the pilot to policy, adjust thresholds, and formalize a RACI for who requests, who approves, and who informs.

Expect cultural friction. Meet it with steadiness, transparency, and fairness. You’re not seeking control of every task; you’re creating a reliable system that honors relationships while preventing silent overload and misaligned promises.

Result

Create a lightweight intake, a live commitments register, and weekly briefings to restore visibility without micromanagement. Secure a time-boxed leadership endorsement, coach managers to redirect requests, and make trade-offs explicit. Use pilot data to formalize a working agreement and decision rights, converting informal workarounds into a transparent, capacity-aware flow.

Future Horizon

If you hold steady, the dominant trajectory is toward normalized routing: most new requests flow through intake, your weekly readout becomes the no-surprises forum, and managers internalize boundary-setting. Mid-term, you’ll gain portfolio-level leverage to reprioritize with executives using data, reducing fire drills and attrition risk. Long-term, a service catalog, SLAs, and clear RACI will institutionalize discipline without dampening collaboration, positioning your team as a trusted, high-reliability partner.

ℹ️ About Solia

Solia is a symbolic‑unconscious processing system built with the proprietary USPT method, designed to examine complex personal, organizational, scientific, and future-oriented problems from multiple angles and deliver an integrated picture with actionable solutions.

It not only addresses the hidden roots of situations but also produces practical roadmaps — whether your topic is about personal life, organizational dynamics, scientific theories, or foresight for emerging trends.

Solia’s analyses are multidimensional, practical, neutral, and inspiring, aiming to illuminate clear decision paths and prevent mistakes caused by unconscious patterns.