Articles
MANAGERS DON’T NEED ALL THE RIGHT ANSWERS
You know the scene well, one of your direct reports approaches your office with their latest business problem and its clear they’re looking for someone to hand it off to … you! This is not a unique situation; this happens several times a day, often not allowing you, the manager, to address other, more pressing business challenges. But, today, with this article, you decide this familiar process has got to change!
As a seasoned manager and leader of many, you are expected to have the authority and ability to have all the “right” answers. Sometimes there seems to be too many problems to solve. Consequently, you realize that you have allowed and contributed to your business subordinates, or worse yet, your operational peers to automatically drop THEIR business problems on YOUR desk.
You begin to draw the conclusion that this repetitive process happens without much prior thought or consideration by others because your established working relationships with them has evolved over a long period of time. Lastly, and as important, you realize you have allowed this problem “hand off” phenomenon to proliferate beyond your current level of personal production capacity or stress level tolerance.
The business world is saturated with challenges and human interactions and it is natural for people within to want to create and maintain their own importance within any formal organization. Creating or embellishing one’s problems within their span of job responsibility is a great way to exaggerate perceived importance to the organization and especially their boss. Consequently, a manager must initiate a pragmatic means to first determine if a business problem is valid or hopefully, just a temporary distraction.
What does a manager do first? It is obvious a new business problem definition and resolution process needs to be utilized to best leverage your own personal productivity and professional effectiveness as a manager of others.
The below series of five fundamental business problem categories - qualifying questions will quickly test any business challenge that surfaces. These questions will validate most problems presented to you and eventually will help you give each problem a resolution priority. Use of these question categories will also encourage more problem ownership from the originator, as they learn, over time, what questions they’ll be typically asked of them, from you, their supervisor.
These are questions you ask of the person presenting a business problem to you as their supervisor:
1) What IS the problem?
- a. When did it start, how frequent does it happen and for how long does it occur?
- b. Who is involved?
2) What are the negative consequences of this problem?
- a. What are the problem ramifications to YOU and to our organization?
- b. How were the problem consequences defined and measured, if at all?
- c. If not defined or quantified, why not? How should they be?
3) What have YOU done to resolve the problem thus far?
- a. Were these YOUR only resolution alternatives?
4) What were the results of YOUR problem resolution attempts?
- a. How were the results measured?
- b. Why do YOU think they did not solve the problem?
5) What exactly do YOU want me to do?
In conclusion, give these fundamental questions a try, or better yet, modify them for your own circumstances. Results can be immediate and impressive.
A famous CEO of General Electric once remarked, “I don’t get paid to have all the right answers … I get paid to ask all the right questions!” Amen!