Management……..the art of doing nothing

Doing the right thing at the right time could be one of the best management skills a manger can have. But does being a manager mean you have to be doing things all the time? Does a manager have to make decisions all the time? What if there seems to be no solution to the problem at hand.

Many managers believe, that to be a successful manager, they must have a solution to each and every problem they encounter at their job, they believe they must have an answer in every situation. I have worked with a young manager who was not able to say “NO” to the company’s client, we were developing new web application and we were facing problems that were unfamiliar to our programming team and we didn’t have answer on how long would it be to fix a particular issues, the manager was not able to tell the client that we have a problem at hand and we have no clear idea how we will be able to fix it. The end results were a frustrated development team and an angry client who we eventually lost.

One of the most valuable management skills I have learned was the ability to do nothing. I have worked with many clients who I would tell “I have no answer to your question or your problem has no apparent fix”, the client may get upset at the beginning but at the end he would really appreciate the honesty and the self-confidence that I have showed.

When I was in college, my programming professor would tell us “ don’t stick your head inside a problem, it will look to you as a big Spaghetti Bowl, but take few steps back and take a look at the big picture and go from there.”
One of the most important management tips I have learned is “you don’t have to think on your feet in every situation.” In some instances you just have to be passive and do nothing and wait till the picture gets clear, a complicated problem will become more manageable over time.