Don’t come to me with problems, come to me with a solution.
Why didn’t you come to me earlier??
I’ve heard these exact two lines uttered by the same manager (not mine, thankfully) and I was absolutely bewildered – so do I approach my boss when I’m stumped, or do I try and solve it, albeit dragging out the timeline to resolution.
In an ideal state, your superiors exist to make the tradeoffs. Your job as a non-decision maker is to lay out that set of tradeoffs for them as well as present these trade-offs to them in as clear a manner as possible.
There are three modes you may be in:
- You know what you need to do, how to do it, and all that’s left is to execute
- You don’t know how to proceed
- You don’t know what to choose
First state is the best – all you need to do is execute within the deadline.
The third state is when you go to your boss. Tradeoffs are often not meant for junior employees. Having worked at a startup, the common refrain is that “It’s the boss’ money”. It’s his money, so he takes the call, and I will deliver on his choice.
Second state is deadly. In this case, I recommend setting down a hard time limit for yourself to find clarity on a path forward. If you exceed that, organise your thoughts, and go find your manager.
It’s a very difficult fine line to tread, but learning to navigate this will help you tremendously in managing upwards.
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