Managing the manager
The silliest concept I've heard from my British managers was "managing the manager". Basically, it means that your manager is a moron and you have to work around it.
The only reason for such thing is "you do not have any other options". Thankfully, I do and I always had. But, I just keep stumbling on managers who need management. Not everyday, not even very often, but my current manager has only one redeeming quality - he is not vindictive, and he is generally a nice guy with some good skills. As an analyst he is in many areas better than me, and I acknowledge that. But as a people manager he is horrible. Worse yet, he is not better than me in all analyst skills, only in some. I have to explain him some things for hours, and have to get him to explain me his ideas for hours. If it was only my problem, he'd had better success with other people, but no, he has problems understanding and explaining things with almost everyone we meet - customers, other analysts, bosses.
I am so tired of this shit. But the project we work on at the moment is quite interesting. I just hope to get separated from him at some point in the future. I don't want to be a manager again, but if it is what it takes to get free of this mess, I may consider it.