It took me a few rounds to detect this trick. I had a boss who would pick up on clues from upper management on where they may be headed. He would come back to our team, and throw everyone at a problem. "This is a priority for management.", he'd tell us. We'd solve the problem. About half the time, the solution would die right there, because management never requested it.

What he was actually doing was trying to guess what upper management wanted before they requested it. This way, when the request did come through, he'd have the solution on the spot. It made him look great. It wasted about half our team's time. One thing it did do for us is give us more experience in solving new problems, but at the expense of getting our day-to-day work done on time.

But I did get to the point of not being so eager to jump on his "call to action" meetings unless I had outside verification that it was an actual call to action by management.

He ended up being the head guy in charge of IT.