Your team keeps coming to you with problems. You keep giving them answers. And now your entire day is other people’s decisions. You’ve accidentally trained your team to never think for themselves.
The pattern nobody notices
Every time you solve something for your team, you’re teaching them one thing. Bring me another problem and I’ll solve that one too.
I had a client who was getting pulled into Slack every few minutes. Someone needed approval. Someone had a question. Someone wanted her opinion. She was drowning. When we looked at the pattern, most of those interruptions were things her team could have solved themselves. They just didn’t think they were allowed to.
What the 1-3-1 framework is
When someone comes to you with a problem, you ask three things. One, what’s the problem? Let them explain it clearly. Three, what are your options? They need to give you at least three possible solutions. One of those could be do nothing. But they need to think through the choices before coming to you. One, what would you do? Which option do they recommend?
If they’ve thought through three options and picked one, they’ve already done the hard work. You’re not solving the problem anymore. You’re reviewing their solution. That’s a completely different job.
Three things the 1-3-1 does
It trains your team to think before they escalate. They know you’re going to ask for options, so they start coming up with options before they even message you. Half the time they solve it themselves and never bother you at all.
It shows you who can think and who can’t. Some people bring three solid options with a clear recommendation. Others struggle to think of one. That tells you something about their capability.
It protects your time. Instead of context switching every few minutes to solve someone else’s problem, you’re reviewing pre-thought solutions. That’s much faster.
Once your team knows the shorthand, you can just type 1-3-1 in Slack. They know what it means. Problem, options, recommendation. Come back when you have all three.
When not to use it
If someone is genuinely stuck, work through it with them. If something is urgent and time-sensitive, make the call. But for the day-to-day noise, the small decisions, the things that could go either way, 1-3-1.
What happens when clients implement this
Within a few weeks, the volume of interruptions drops. Not because people have fewer problems, but because they’re solving more of them on their own. When they do come to you, the conversation is faster. They’ve already done the thinking. You’re just validating and course correcting.
Train your team to think. Get your time back.
