A competent manager must be constantly on the move, bringing his vision to the collective and individual action of his employees. Here is the role of the manager on paper. In reality, however, it is almost impossible for a manager to keep such a precise vision of everyone’s action while maintaining a global and sustainable approach to the activity.

And this is not desirable. Indeed, a manager who is too involved in the processes will waste a significant amount of time adjusting a whole bunch of variables whose scope is limited and will end up wearing out the patience of his employees who will experience this intrusion as a challenge to their work.A competent manager must therefore know how to keep a certain distance and have a global and long-term vision of the activity.

Then comes the case in which a colleague comes to ask a pointed question. The manager then has two choices:

Answer the question, knowing that not all the information is necessarily available and that by making the decision, he becomes responsible for the consequences of it, or else kick the can down the road.
This is by far the easiest solution. Not to mention that there is no shortage of means to kick the can down the road (evasive answer, postponement of decision-making to an indefinite date, request for formalization, etc.).

But this solution, which seems to be risk-free for the manager, is very detrimental in the long term. Indeed, it is his very role within the company that he doubts through this practice. Once the decision has been avoided, the unfortunate colleague has no choice but to persist in the hypothetical expectation of a clear answer or to step out of his role and make the decision himself.

In either case, the manager is no longer a facilitator but a sticking point that the company’s actors will take care to avoid so as not to put the brakes on their daily work.