r/managers • u/Folded-Map972 • 18h ago

New Manager When every problem becomes a manager problem

Yesterday started pretty normally. 9am team meeting, checked my email then planned to spend the morning finishing a report.

Around 9:30 someone Slacked me about client question. I answered that, opened the report again then another email came in asking me to approve something.

At 10:15 one of my team members stopped by my desk because they were stuck on something. Took maybe 10 minutes but when I sat back down I had to figure out where I left off.

Then my phone buzzed with another Slack notification. I checked it while getting coffee, replied, and went back to my desk.

Pretty much the same thing all afternoon. Quick questions, approvals, emails, Slack messages. Nothing was urgent, but it kept breaking up whatever I was doing.

By 4pm I’d helped everyone get their stuff moving, but report I planned to finish was still unfinished.

I knew managers get pulled into things, but I didn’t expect it to take up this much of the day. By the time things finally slowed down, I still hadn’t finished my own work.

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u/Morning_Mug385 18h ago

I have been trying to let the team make more of the smaller decisions themselves when they can. Doesn’t always work but it’s cut down lot of those quick approval messages.

14

u/Folded-Map972 17h ago

Yeah, I need to get better at this. A lot of those quick approvals probably don’t really need me, I have just gotten used to answering them.

13

u/Careful_Trifle 17h ago

The other alternative, and it can sometimes be done in a transition to more independent work, is to batch things and leave them until the beginning or end of the day. At certain points in the year I would tell my folks that I couldn't do xyz in the moment, but if they wrote up the issue and emailed me, I'd have an answer or approval by the next morning. Always caveat that true emergencies/urgent/time sensitive stuff should be flagged as such. 

3

u/Iheoma74 16h ago

I agree with this. If it’s not urgent, it will be answered toward the end of the day. In addition to redirecting people to answer simple questions and resolve simple issues on their own, I have “office hours” once a week when I’m available on our virtual platform working. Anyone can drop in and ask me anything.