Our thinking

“We thought we’d check with you first”

“Could you just approve this?”

 “What should I do about this?”

 Innocent enough questions?  Or symptoms of a team stuck in the answer trap?

Someone hits a problem. They ask their manager. The manager answers and, big deal, it’s only taken a minute or two. Except that, over time, this has become accepted behaviour. Teams turning to their manager for guidance rather than working through the issue and taking responsibility. Teams become ineffectual, concerned never to make a mistake and always ‘checking in’. The manager does all the thinking and makes all the decisions. A bottleneck of competing questions, uncertainties and hesitancy builds up…result: manager overload.

There's less time for the things only leaders can do — planning ahead, developing people, building the relationships that actually grow the business. 

Teams stop stretching. Capable people get fewer chances to practise judgement, so their confidence never quite catches up with their competence. Given a real decision, they hesitate — not because they can't do it, but because they are instilled with the culture of seeking approval and accountability avoidance.

Decisions stop translating into action. This is the one that catches organisations out. A decision gets made. Then it comes back — as a clarifying question, a request for reassurance. The decision was made, but the work still hasn't moved. Leadership time gets spent twice (at least) for the same outcome.

Most organisations respond to overloaded managers with more leadership development. 

You can teach a manager brilliant coaching questions in a workshop. But that won’t release them from the answer trap. The team’s inaction remains second nature. Green light addiction suffocates resourcefulness. The answer trap often isn't a skills gap. It's a habit, reinforced daily, by an organisation that's very good at rewarding exactly the behaviour it says it wants to change. 

None of this means managers should stop giving answers.  The shift here isn’t, ‘always ask, never tell.’   It’s leaders who know the difference — and teams who've had enough practice, permission and context to make good decisions closer to the work. Fewer things bounce back that don't need to. The ones that do, bounce back for the right reasons.

When companies get this right, building on the belief that people can think for themselves, we call them Thinking Organisations. When you start to move towards this way of working, you'll notice the difference on an ordinary Tuesday: fewer unnecessary questions, decisions that lead to action, and leaders with enough headroom to look up from the inbox. 

You may well be nodding in agreement at some of the situations in this article. Often the difficulty isn't so much knowing there are answer traps in your organisation, it's knowing why they are there and what needs to happen to solve them.

That's what our 5-Minute Bottleneck Check is for. Twelve quick questions, no jargon, and a result that shows you where thinking might be getting stuck in your organisation — and why. 

Click here to go to the check.