Issues Don't Usually Fix Themselves

Crisis prevention

“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” ~ Arnold Glasow

As leaders, we need to keep a finger on the pulse of our projects and our teams, but without inserting ourselves into every decision. It’s a balance along the continuum between delegate-and-abandon and micromanagement.

Encourage your people to come to you with problems or issues, but ideally with at least one suggestion for solving that problem. You can trouble-shoot solutions with them, or allocate resources for them to use, or simply green-light a course of action.

Have a “no failure, only learning experiences” mindset. People will be less likely to try to cover up their mistakes. Part of this mindset is that everyone makes mistakes from time to time. Competent professionals then work to make things right.

As a daily practice, work to delegate to get things off your plate that someone else can do. That way, if there is a crisis, you are not going to miss deadlines on several other high-priority projects if you need to jump in to help fix it.

(image generated using Midjourney)