One of my colleagues told me a story I've heard often lately. I've even seen it myself in other companies. It's the story of upper-level
I've seen and heard about other similar instances: Managers having their staff slashed so much that work can't get done without hours and hours of overtime, managers asked to accomplish things in a month that reasonably take 6 months to finish. I know of one time when a manager was given expectations and told to make a plan to meet them. When upper-level saw the plan, they remarked "This is a long list. How are you going to do this?". It was upper-level who set the expectation, and they seemed surprised at what was needed to accomplish it.
That's the point I'm trying to make. We as upper-level managers not only need to look at real data, but also the people and man-hours involved before we set expectations. We need to listen better and not always think our people are making excuses. The other day I just felt a need to write something like this, to hopefully get us all to stop and think for a bit at how we manage. Many times we were the one who hired the people involved, and I'm sure we hired high-achievers. We need to ask ourselves why our hires are now struggling. Maybe it's us, not them.