How overly detailed instructions weaken your team’s judgement

Writing out every step feels responsible. It reduces the chance of mistakes, saves a few questions and reflects the way you would do the job yourself. For a manager who knows the work well, it can seem like the clearest form of help available.

The hidden message is that only their hands are required, not their judgement. People learn to execute rather than think, and the problem shows up when something unexpected happens. Instead of adjusting, they pause and come back to you, because the script never told them what to do in that situation.

The video’s fix is to describe the outcome you need and the constraints that genuinely matter, then let the team decide the method. One approach says “follow my steps”; the other says “solve this problem”. A practical starting point is to leave the “how” out of your very next handoff.

This does not mean abandoning people who are new to a task. Someone learning a process for the first time may need more structure, and some work has fixed safety or compliance steps. The aim is to be precise about the outcome and the real limits, while leaving space for judgement everywhere else.