Go Put Out That Fire Now! A Lesson in Providing Direction

Have you ever had a manager or colleague ask you to take care of a problem, only to give you virtually no background or guidance?  And when you ask more than one question, you’re told you’ll need to figure it out yourself.  The good old delegate and dash.  Talk about being set up to fail.  But now it’s your problem because you are not a mind reader.  Plus, now you are forced to prioritize the urgent over the important (my experience is most fires turn out to be relatively unimportant).  Good luck with that.

Since we are always having to put out fires at work, I’ll use the fire analogy to help managers understand the difficult position they put staff members in when they do this.