10 August 2024

"Thomas is going on PTO during the push right before the big release? Eh, it'll work out, the team always manages to get it done. After all... worst thing I could do would be to rush in there and make some kind of irreparable mistake...." Periodically, you run across a manager for whom everything just seems to sort itself out, without any required action on their part. The build magically fixes itself; the problematic team member magically gets handled; the team magically clears the obstacles out of their way....

Context:

The laissez-faire (which by the way, is French for "do nothing") manager, or LFM, typically has a story to tell from early in their career as a manager:

In some cases, there's a manager out there with both stories: the time they made the decision too quickly and screwed it up, followed by the time they did nothing and it went away. Regardless, the LFM typically has that story at the back of their head every time they are faced with a non-trivial decision to make.

There's a smaller percentage of LFMs who are simply too afraid to make a decision, so they pretend that they are guided by the stories they've heard of other managers who fell into one of the two above stories. "I'm smarter than THAT manager," they tell themselves and their spouses proudly. "I'm not going to fall into THAT trap." When pressed, though, they won't have actually lived it, and deep down, it's really driven by their insecurity about their management skills that keeps them from making a decision.

Keep in mind that a refusal to make a decision is not the same as an inability to make one due to lack of time or presence. There's also the possibility that the LFM is, actually, a closeted Flagpole Manager and they're waiting to see what the results of their queries to their superiors turn up.

Consequences:

Many of the consequences of the LFM are the same as that of the Absentee:

Variants:

It's arguable that the LFM is a variant of Absentee, but again the intentions are different enough that they manifest some different outcomes.

A LFM can sometimes be mistaken for a Perfectionist, since the Perfectionist often also wants to "take their time to come up with the right choice", but the differences will be apparent over time--where the Perfectionist eventually makes a choice, the LFM never does.

Mitigation:

If you work for the LFM. Well, the good news is that you can be pretty sure that your boss isn't going to surprise you with a bad decision any time soon; the bad news, of course, is that they're not going to surprise you with a decision (good OR bad) any time soon. This leaves you with a couple of options:

If you are the LFM.

If the LFM works for you.

Tags: management   antipatterns