Your Team Isn't Slow. Your Instructions Are Rubbish

Your team isn’t slow.
Your instructions are rubbish.

When the same task takes forever every time, the problem isn’t on the receiving end.

The brief that left the most important decision unspecified. Rubbish.

The “use your judgement” with no judgement criteria. Rubbish.

The deadline that wasn’t a deadline because nothing happens if it’s missed. Rubbish.

The success metric you didn’t define so anyone could claim it was met. Rubbish.

The handover that gave them the task but kept the context. Rubbish.

You hand them a riddle and call them junior when they take three days to solve it.

So you blame the team. You complain about their pace. You hire someone “more senior.” You cut headcount and bring it in-house. You install another project tool to “improve visibility.” You hire a consultant on operational efficiency. You read another book about delegation.

The team is doing exactly what your instructions told them to do. The instructions are the problem. You wrote them in five minutes between calls and acted surprised when the work took five days.

Now stop and answer this honestly.

Are you leading — or briefing in a way that makes you look indispensable when nothing gets done well without you?

A founder writes briefs that produce predictable outcomes. Someone protecting their relevance writes briefs vague enough to require constant clarification.