Don’t come to me with problems, only with solutions
Is wrong in so many ways…
- When not if a manager would say such a thing, he denies his (her, not often enough) very job. Yes, the job of a manager in times of knowledge workers truly is what it was in times past, glorious as they were; “decision making under uncertainty”. Which has devolved into sickly-panic over any uncertainty that is inherent in results as future states;
- So, workers — sounds too much like worker bees, working to their untimely death for the blip of glory of the Leader (quod non ..!) — should come to their bossy type or that empty vessel would have too little to do..?
- When workers would come to their bossy types with problems and solutions, the latter would be degraded to secretaries of the collect-input-collate-and-report types. Because that would be what they’d do;
- And not would they be the emperors in charge of Decision Making (preference ratification) over proposals (researched scenarios / preferences) to solve problems, as that suggests managers of this type, would have any inside knowledge. True, sometimes, very sometimes, one meets these old-style (old school is too old school) true managers that actually have the best of knowledge over the problem at hand, and knowledge of the environment, context and strategies surrounding and/or overarching the decision, at the same level as the workers doing the solutions research.
If the manager would really have better info on the latter categories than his workers, he’d have failed to give them proper information (mention not the risk of the atrocious destruction of humanity that micro management is) i.e. not delegated properly, for the scenarios of the workers would limp and be of greatly suboptimal quality to his decision making; - Rare then, would be the true manager, that has sufficient knowledge nay wisdom to know how much to decide himself and what swarms of decisions to delegate and sit as go-beween and stakeholder representative of his workers to other departments and upper regions, facilitating whatever goes around in his department;
- Rare then, the manager that says, can handle: “Solve what you can and report the solutions via my business office; bring me not solutions but problems that need over-head resolution”. Not the mis-quote; they’d not say that which makes it the one deserved, righteous forms of humblebragging-by-remaining-silent allowed.
However rare … the quote is still a misquote. As so many are of the manager type of the first couple of bullets, and say the thing only when they intend to degrade themselves to the pitiful that don’t see their own empty-vesselness when uttering the quote.
Oh, and:
[If you think you’re in, you aren’t; Utrecht]
