micromanagement from afar

[Found this one as a draft from a couple of months ago. Guess I forgot to actually post it.]

He's done it again. Less that two weeks after I walked out on him, because he didn't understand how much work I had to do whilst he is out of the office, he commits the office to producing six draft documents by the end of next week.

He pays me to understand what capacity there is in the office, and adjust that capacity to the deadlines we have. We have a particularly big project this week, which I am project managing - I'm not qualified to do it, but nor was I remotely qualified to do it the last time. This time, at least, I'm allowed to hire consultants for a day. So I plan, in detail, how to get this job done. I need all the capacity of the office to do it, and am anxious about the time I've been asked to devote to meetings for him and or him on Monday and Tuesday. The consultants will work Wednesday and Wednesday only, so unless we have all the materials ready for them, starting Monday morning, it'll be a waste of money. [Not that he seems to care about wasting office money, see previous two posts!]

He emails my colleague, the only other one with proper project management experience, saying 'can you please coordinate all those not involved in project X to develop the documents below]. The 'documents below' turn out to be a list of six different detained briefing notes that he promised by the end of the week. If this was a donor, and we might get funds out of it, then I might understand, but it's not! It's a private consultancy firm that we've agreed to do the work for, for free!