Sometime ago I went on a management development programme. One of the topics we covered was “managing ambiguity”. What I took away from the subject was that it was the leader’s responsibility to manage the ambiguity, not his people’s. Hence his communication should be clear and unequivocal so as to ensure the team is aligned and no ambiguity is left for them to struggle with.

A sharp reminder of what to was brought to my attention a couple of days ago. This is what was said to a team of individual contributors by a director

[...] our “Operate Independently collectively” strategy is still [...]

You just have to love the managment speak.

Update:I’ve found the origninal text he was referring to! Just to show how things get distilled as it gets passed down the chain:

Operate independently, Compete collectively, Manage collaboratively.