My daughter just started high school.

The most important message her new school is communicating to parents? “Stop solving your kid’s problems.”

The school is requesting that, when our children come to us with a problem about school – whether their grades, schedule, or whatever occupies teenage minds – parents support students to figure out who they have to contact and to help them become more independent.

One of my friends had a problem with downloading the school learning software on his 13-year-old daughter’s new laptop. He called the IT department at the school and they told him to send her in to handle that.

And isn’t that what we want for our children: independence and an eventual launch into adulthood? 

We Have the Same Issue – and Responsibility

At work we exist in a parallel universe with the same opportunities. 

Your thoughts may be along the lines of, “I’m running restaurants, not a management school.”

At the same time, however, management education remains key to internal capability and reducing the load on ownership. 

That may sound like a riddle, but it’s really more of a warning.

To have the business you crave, you must have the same attitude for your management teams as the school does for our kids.

Stay Out of the Trap

Ownership groups that see every initiative as a chance to involve and grow their management team end up – by working with me – shedding their heavy workload and the awful, frustrating feeling of excessive obligation that so many of my clients complain about.

Rather than doing the work themselves, they start to spend more time showing their team how to become better.

These business owners see a smart investment in education that ultimately keeps them out of the trap of having handled things themselves for so long – and experiencing so much success doing it that way – that they doom themselves to doing all the work.

 

Two Clients

In the past few weeks, two sets of owners in my client community wrestled with these concepts.

One made significant moves without stopping to listen to their management team’s perspective. So, when they rolled out the decision, it surprised and blindsided people, who then felt undervalued.

Another questioned all the time and energy going onto management development, observing that this work fails to make people’s lives easier. And at first they’re right – but next when they stick to it, work lives do become easier. 

My wish for you? Give yourself more of what you want, not more of what you don’t want.

Do you see every thought about a task, decision, or activity on your list as an opportunity to involve and strengthen your team?