Management activity often seems to be telling people what to do, then fighting the fires when it is not done, or not done to a standard you deem acceptable, or not done on time.

A simple human reaction: “tell me what to do, and I will do it, but if you do not tell me what to do, how do I know I have to do it”?

A simple solution, hard to implement because you need to change first: stop telling people what to do  which takes away their responsibly and ownership, and start encouraging them to take ownership of problems and propose solutions they then become responsible for implementing.

Management starts with helping people see problems, and making sure they have the skills, resources  and motivation to fix them, and then it becomes leadership.

Taking the easy way out and doing it yourself sometimes appears the easiest solution, but it is rarely one that is the best solution, it is just a short term band-aid on a symptom, rarely a solution.

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