This is the nature of management. Decisions are made, usually for good reasons, which in turn prompt other decisions. So when problems arise - and they always do - disentangling them is not as simple as correcting the original error. Often, finding a solution is a multi-step endeavor. There is the problem you know you are trying to solve - think of that as an oak tree - and then there are all the other problems - think of these as saplings - that sprouted from the acorns that fell around it. And these problems remain after you cut the oak tree down.

There are two major errors with that line of thinking. The first is overestimating what you, the manager, are capable of. Yes, it may be within your power to solve a wide variety of issues, but as a single individual, you can’t solve that many of them. The best work comes from those who have the time to live and breathe a problem fully, who can dedicate themselves to finding the best solution.

The second error is assuming that nobody wants to take on hard problems. In fact, the most talented employees aren’t looking for special treatment or “easy” projects. They want to be challenged. There is no greater sign of trust than handing your report an intricately tangled knot that you believe she can pull apart, even if you’re not sure how.

Often, a core skill of middle management is the ability to manipulate the financial reports to compensate for a set of numbers that aren’t giving the right answer. Everyone who has put together a business plan knows that if you can’t fudge the key assumptions to justify the decision your boss wants to make, you don’t know enough about the business.

And this story repeats itself through the history of management science; almost every classic of the literature seems to have described a way of adapting systems to a more complicated world, and then to have become obsolete itself. If you look past the slogans and think about what things like ‘management by objectives’, ‘focus on core competences’ and so on actually mean, they are all different ways of advising executives to restructure their businesses so that they don’t generate complexity faster than it can be managed.

The generic solutions are not always bad. A lot of management problem are surprisingly generic: a missing communication channel or a failure to notice that the environment has changed. If the problem is understood correctly, the solution is usually quite simple — it’s likely to be a variation on the same theme of ‘the world has got more complicated and you need to take steps to reconcile that complexity with your capacity to manage it’ that has been the message of management science since Alfred D. Chandler.

But because the solutions are often simple, the work is surprisingly unpleasant. An effective consultant is likely to spend most of their time telling people obvious things that they don’t want to hear. That’s a difficult combination; while not particularly intellectually stimulating, it’s emotionally taxing. It’s not surprising that so many people find doing this intolerable, and consequently let their ethics slip. Telling your client what they want to hear is a better way to get repeat business; the problem won’t go away and the person commissioning the work will still like you.