Out of orders

One of my favourite leadership quotes is hidden within Frank Herbert’s Dune :

“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”

Said differently, if you always tell your team what to do, they become reliant on your instructions, and you become the bottleneck for all progress.

I could happily spend the day whack-a-mole-ing through everyone’s issues. Knowing this, I have to make a conscious effort to ask questions instead of throwing out solutions.

This is the cheat code – if someone is stuck, you swallow every instinct to solve their problem and ask a question. Not a fake question, like: “Have you thought about <solution>?” But one that teases apart the problem and triggers new solutions to emerge.

At the very least, you can ask: “What do you think the solution might be?” That always kick-starts a meaningful discussion.

I still fail at this ambition regularly. At one stage, I even had Post-It notes around my monitor to remind me. But I can sleep at night knowing I’m trying.

A related resource, which approaches the topic from a different direction, is The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. It’s a short, life-changing read.