How do you deal with with senior managers lack of clarity and blue sky thinking?

[NewManager101]

I'm a new manager. In my role, I deal with many other senior managers to work out the project objectives, the problem, requirements and a solution or recommendation. Once this is done it gets passed to the tech staff to deliver.

However, the senior managers I deal with, tend to simply present a solution (with little idea why they are doing it), cannot clearly articulate their requirements and talk endlessly about various ideas but no idea how to tackle it further. There is a lot of ambiguity, unnecessary work, and frustration from the whole team. My predecessors have not lasted long and I am beginning to understand why!

Any tips how to navigate this or any books or articles I can read to help guide the senior managers from discovery to specific deliverables?

I work in an environment similar to how you describe, only instead of senior managers, my useless lot are voted in!

I find it useful to jot everything down, and then delegate downwards in a way that makes sense to you. As it comes back up, after numerous reviews, it takes shape as something that was originally asked but more appropriate. Usually, the Minister has changed their mind by this point and it no long matters - perhaps the same applies?

Thankfully, most of the work I do is pretty predictable as based on international conventions but some things do require out of the box thinking. But I’d hate to be dealing with clueless managers 24/7.

If you ever work it out, please let the rest of us know.

I've spent five years 'training' senior management to answer the questions

'What is it you want to achieve?'

'Yes, but what does that look like?'

'Why do you need this?'

'If I know what it's for, I can probably give more useful answers'

and when at the end of my tether because there's another missive undermining processes and making work significantly harder if not impossible 'Has anybody ever considered actually asking the opinions of somebody who knows what they're talking about before making a decision?'.

@NeverDropYourMooncup - OMG - These are exactly the questions I ask which the senior managers I work with who do their hardest to avoid answering. I wonder if they have had training from politicians! I find sometimes there is an underlying motive they don't want to admit immediately - but my god it is frustrating and makes my job so hard.

So far the only thing that is helping is talking to them individually and using my best communication skills a la listen, acknowledge and name their feelings (who knew that the book How To Talk to Kids would come in useful!). However, this is not helping them articulate what they really want and why.

I forgot 'let's just take a breath, calm the fuck down and look at this objectively. Yes, I know it was needed. I did it six months ago. I'd been emailing you about it for nine. I therefore did it before it was due and half a year before your frankly hysterical WE HAVENT DONE THIS OH MY GOD YOU NEED TO DO THIS WHY HAVENT YOU DONE THIS IVE BOUGHT IN A CONSULTANT THATS PROMISED ME A BISCUIT AND THE SOLUTION TO ALL MY PROBLEMS' Mind you, you could have looked for yourself rather than get your knickers in a twist unnecessarily. Or asked me at any point in the past...but that would require speaking to somebody who knows what they're talking about, wouldn't it?

It's usually worded more as 'already sorted in Jan/did this, did that, arranged that, did that, updated that and here you go, see for yourself and take a fekkin chill pill but there is this and this which I don't seem to have as per my attached 15 contacts asking you for them'

And the I DONT WANT TO RUIN PEOPLES LIVES AND MAKE REDUNDANCIES AND THE PRESS WOULD SAY AND....

uh, yes, I know what the financial implications are, thank you. Strangely, I'm well aware of them in a way I don't think you were until this afternoon? Anyhow, it's all sorted.

I don't favour my chances of longevity there, but tbh, I'm beyond the grovelling these days.

Establishing objectives, scope and requirements is often the hardest part of a PM's job I think. But I think it's really important to understand, at the outset:

What is the problem you're trying to solve?
Is that REALLY the problem you're trying to solve? Are you sure?!
State it, again and again to make sure the problem really is clear. Often it isn't.
Then, what would good look like? What are the objectives?
What are the deliverables?
What is the scope of the work? What is included and what is not? It's just as important to state what's out of scope as what's in scope. So is it all of Dept A? Or just these people? What about department B?

In my experience you can only really start considering solutions once a) you really understand the problem b) you know where you want to get to c) you know what is included and not included.

But in the process of asking all that and documenting it again and again and again you should get to a point where everyone agrees "this is the problem, this is what we want to deliver and this is why"

And do document it, because at a later stage they'll say "but I thought we were fixing every problem in the whole wide world with this?" and you can go "no, just these things we agreed"

This picture sums it up

@TheStroppyFeminist - love the picture - this is exactly it. You raise a great point about first trying to understand the problem. This can sometimes also be hard for a lot of people to articulate this and demonstrate why. Thanks for the suggested questions.