While taking this "hunker down" mentality, it helps to minimize interactions with the boss, except when you know the exchange will be a positive one. "It's possible to have a functioning relationship with your manager that involves only a minimum of interaction," says Scott Berkun, an independent project management and product design consultant. "As long as you and your manager agree on your goals, how you go about getting your work done shouldn't matter."

As for positive exchanges, he suggests going out of your way to keep your manager happy and even doing things that help him believe whatever he needs to believe, be it that he's always right or that every issue and decision is all about him. "You can view this as a tax on the work, sort of like filling out forms or other administrivia," Berkun says.

The hunker-down approach worked for Peter Baker, vice president of information systems and technology at Emcor Facilities Services, a subsidiary of Emcor Group. Baker once worked as a project lead for a micromanager who interfered with the work of the programmers. Baker advised his team members to stay out of the manager's way, avoid the politics and focus on their jobs.

He also suggested that they take 10 minutes each afternoon to document everything they'd done that day. "I remember sitting them down and saying, 'This guy is always going to come in and ask you, "What about this, this and this?" And you can just pull out your piece of paper and say, "I did that, that and that.'" It was kind of a capitulation, but we turned it into a positive by being proactive."

As he focused on the work, McQuiston soon found the group looking to him for leadership, and when his boss was given six months to find another position, McQuiston was asked to lead the system conversion.

The technique worked. "He was looking for reasons to [complain], so if you didn't give him any, he'd move on to an easier target," Baker says.

Take Action

Laying low isn't always the best tactic. Sometimes it's better to lay out your needs on the manager's desk and at least see how he responds. The first step is to define exactly what those needs are, such as ownership of certain kinds of decisions, more resources or just the room to succeed or fail on your own, Berkun says.

"Once you've defined exactly what you need, prioritized it and translated it into terms your manager might understand, you bring those requirements to them," he says. "If the response isn't favorable, you know exactly where you stand, which is important. You can confidently make decisions based on the reality of your situation."

That's what Wade did when he accepted a job at Children's Hospital Boston in the 1970s. He wasn't overly impressed with his new boss, but he saw great growth potential at the hospital, in an atmosphere he found interesting. "I figured I'd demonstrate to myself that I'd learned to turn around a bad situation and that in five years, this guy will move on," Wade says.

Despite the positive attitude, Wade's first seven months were "absolute hell," he recounts. The boss was a classic crisis manager who would inevitably find reasons several times a week to call "emergency" meetings at 4:30 p.m. for the entire IT management group -- and then not even stay for the entire meeting. "The meetings would run three hours, and this guy would leave at 6:15," Wade says.

Wade's interpretation was that the boss -- an ex-salesman -- didn't feel competent to solve problems that came up and figured if he got all the managers together, they'd get the problems fixed.

One day, Wade took a stand. He walked into the boss's office and said, "When you're not there providing leadership, we come out of these meetings without much more [direction] than what we went in with. So next time there's a crisis meeting, I'll have a letter in my hand, and it'll be my resignation."

The tactic worked. After that, when the boss called a meeting, it was better planned and better timed, and he was there to provide guidance. "It was almost like by channeling the guy, he became more effective," Wade says. The manager was eventually let go, and Wade became CIO at the hospital.

Despite Wade's success, working for a bad boss usually means either accepting the situation for what it is and behaving accordingly, or planning your exit strategy, C2's Glen says.

"Can bosses get better? Sure," he says. "They do so because they discover new things and realize how badly they've been doing. But relying on that is like waiting to win the lottery. You can't teach your boss."