Every manager should expect to get some advice and direction from their experienced employees, that's a mild form "managing up" but there are some situations that I've seen that go beyond that:

1. New Manager - The employees have to train the manager and that puts them in charge for a litle while.
2. Apathetic Manager - A manager that could do a better job and just doesn't so that the employees have to pick up the slack to keep their company / group running.
3. Unskilled Manager - An ineffective manager doesn't focus on the right things may delegate real management to the employees I've seen this done intentionally and unintentionally.

Most bad managers I've seen were a mix of 2 and 3 and that seems to be what you are facing, everyone is different so I can only offer a few suggestions and leave it to you to judge and adapt:

• You're going to need him to "buy in" to your idea so he needs to be able to take some ownership, a good way to do this is to go to him with an abstracted version of your idea and ask for his "expertise" on what kinds of goals should be reasonable, effective, and make you all look good to upper management. It's important that you listen and use that advice as best you can - remember you aren't asking for an opinion you are asking for expertise.
• Guide the suggestions by asking questions - "Measuring lines of code is a bad measurement." would be better asked "Do you that would that encourage sloppy coding and reward people adding fluff?"
• Once some buy in has happened then offer to do the research on different measurements and get back to him on it with a summary by X deadline. He doesn't have to do anything and deadlines make things official.
• Build a "Dashboard" - People love dashboards with charts and status lights, especially managers - just be careful about what you put on there. You want him to use measurements so make it easy and fun.

Every manager should expect to get some advice and direction from their experienced employees, that's a mild form "managing up" but there are some situations that I've seen that go beyond that:

1. New Manager - The employees have to train the manager and that puts them in charge for a litle while.
2. Apathetic Manager - A manager that could do a better job and just doesn't so that the employees have to pick up the slack to keep their company / group running.
3. Unskilled Manager - An ineffective manager doesn't focus on the right things may delegate real management to the employees I've seen this done intentionally and unintentionally.

Most bad managers I've seen were a mix of 2 and 3 and that seems to be what you are facing, everyone is different so I can only offer a few suggestions and leave it to you to judge and adapt:

• You're going to need him to "buy in" to your idea so he needs to be able to take some ownership, a good way to do this is to go to him with an abstracted version of your idea and ask for his "expertise" on what kinds of goals should be reasonable, effective, and make you all look good to upper management. It's important that you listen and use that advice as best you can - remember you aren't asking for an opinion you are asking for expertise.
• Guide the suggestions by asking questions - "Measuring lines of code is a bad measurement." would be better asked "Do you think that would that encourage sloppy coding and reward people adding fluff?"
• Once some buy in has happened then offer to do the research on different measurements and get back to him on it with a summary by X deadline. He doesn't have to do anything and deadlines make things official.
• Build a "Dashboard" - People love dashboards with charts and status lights, especially managers - just be careful about what you put on there. You want him to use measurements so make it easy and fun.