Push recommendations up, not problems

Require reports to bring a recommendation alongside any problem — it’s a delegation practice, not just a time-saver.

Why it works

When people bring problems without solutions, they are implicitly delegating up — pushing the cognitive work back to the manager. Requiring a recommendation trains the analytical and decision-making skills that make genuine autonomy possible. It also reveals how the person thinks, enabling better coaching. The practice works because decision-making skill is developed through doing, not through watching — and "bring me a recommendation" is the smallest viable doing.

How to do it

1. Establish a team norm: no problem comes up without a proposed solution, even a rough one.
2. When someone brings you only a problem, ask "what would you do?" before offering your own answer.
3. Resist the reflex to short-circuit their thinking with your answer — let them work through it with you asking questions.
4. Praise the quality of reasoning in recommendations, not just whether you agree with the answer.

Evidence

Learning by doing and the development of decision-making competence through practice are well supported in skill acquisition research. Asking people to generate solutions before receiving feedback is consistent with desirable difficulties research on learning. (mechanistic)

The "bring a recommendation" norm is practitioner advice; its direct effect on delegation quality or team capability has not been isolated in controlled studies.

Sources

• Bjork (1994), Memory and Metamemory Considerations in the Training of Human Beings, in Metcalfe & Shimamura (Eds.)

Common mistake

Treating the recommendation requirement as bureaucracy and overriding it routinely — if the manager always ends up solving the problem anyway, people learn to wait rather than think.