4 ms·

Every time I hear this, it contributes to a little tickling feeling I have called "What are in this office for, then?" When I hear it, I can only wonder what i

Every time I hear this, it contributes to a little tickling feeling I have called "What are in this office for, then?" When I hear it, I can only wonder what it is these managers actually do, if they aren't there to solve problems?

foolfoolz 6y ago
this is much more about framing communication in a positive way than actually changing the behavior of your work. you can still be stuck with no idea how to proceed. just changing the way you bring it up can make a big difference in how you are perceived. who sounds more competent? “i’m totally out of ideas and don’t know what to do” vs “we haven’t made progress here and i’m going to ask this person next”
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  Neither of those are solutions; the second one is just a reworded problem. I doubt your manager can't tell the difference between solutions and reworded problems.
adrianN 6y ago
Imho managers aren't supposed to solve product problems. Managers are communication hubs between different teams who know enough about out-of-team needs to prioritize the different tasks that the team can do.
- watwut 6y ago
  They should not be leading teams nor make decisions about process nor about personal issues. If this is their whole scope they should do nothing outside of task prioritization and should have much less power.
muzani 6y ago
They're not there to solve problems. They are an interface. They are there to route information from one party to another, and act as information abstractions. Arguably, they're making you do the job of abstracting the information for them. But that is not a bad thing either; it's like moving the responsibility of testing to programmers instead of testers. It reduces the back and forth overhead of trying to explain the problem and solution. Ideally the problems are all localized to the people who can solve them, and the manager deals with problems that need resources from multiple departments. But like all "best practices", this can go too far.
tumetab1 6y ago
The same feeling I got when faced this "bing me solutions" mantra. I'm tasked with doing X. Encountered problem Y again which outside my responsibilities. Brought Y issue into the manager attention and got the "bring me solutions" :\ The "bring me solutions" mantra is many items a cop-out used by managers because they don't want to deal with an issue and expect their team to do their work from them, e.g., find who responsible for Y, who can fix it and when.

foolfoolz 6y ago

this is much more about framing communication in a positive way than actually changing the behavior of your work. you can still be stuck with no idea how to proceed. just changing the way you bring it up can make a big difference in how you are perceived. who sounds more competent? “i’m totally out of ideas and don’t know what to do” vs “we haven’t made progress here and i’m going to ask this person next”

DangitBobby 6y ago
Neither of those are solutions; the second one is just a reworded problem. I doubt your manager can't tell the difference between solutions and reworded problems.

adrianN 6y ago

Imho managers aren't supposed to solve product problems. Managers are communication hubs between different teams who know enough about out-of-team needs to prioritize the different tasks that the team can do.

watwut 6y ago
They should not be leading teams nor make decisions about process nor about personal issues. If this is their whole scope they should do nothing outside of task prioritization and should have much less power.

muzani 6y ago

They're not there to solve problems. They are an interface. They are there to route information from one party to another, and act as information abstractions. Arguably, they're making you do the job of abstracting the information for them. But that is not a bad thing either; it's like moving the responsibility of testing to programmers instead of testers. It reduces the back and forth overhead of trying to explain the problem and solution. Ideally the problems are all localized to the people who can solve them, and the manager deals with problems that need resources from multiple departments. But like all "best practices", this can go too far.

tumetab1 6y ago

The same feeling I got when faced this "bing me solutions" mantra. I'm tasked with doing X. Encountered problem Y again which outside my responsibilities. Brought Y issue into the manager attention and got the "bring me solutions" :\ The "bring me solutions" mantra is many items a cop-out used by managers because they don't want to deal with an issue and expect their team to do their work from them, e.g., find who responsible for Y, who can fix it and when.