RULE 37 Train them to bring you solutions, not problems it's terribly easy for staff to moan. i think it becomes a habit. you have to train your staff not just to moan. you can allow moaning but insist that if they bring you a problem they must also suggest a solution to the problem. Any idea that there is something wrong should always be met with, `And what would you like me to do about it?' if they complain, meet them with, `What do you think we should do?' The best manager i ever worked for carried this even further and made us tell him the solution first ­ and then let him guess what he thought our `problem' was. it made it a game, which was sort of fun, but it also made us think on our feet a bit ­ made us be a bit lateral in our moaning. i was having a problem with security staff. i thought they were wiping the ccTv footage without watching it, which was not on. This was my problem because if anything had happened i would have carried the can. i needed them to watch carefully but couldn't devise a solution to this problem ­ but i couldn't just go to the boss and moan that they weren't doing their job properly. i had to come up with a solution first. Then it dawned on me that i didn't need to go to the boss. i could solve this one myself. i had to make sure the security staff thought there was something worth watching. i mentioned that some members of staff had been reported as having sex some- where on the premises and it could have been covered by the ccTv cameras, but no one was sure by which camera. There were cameras covering car parks, offices, corridors and storage areas in the basement. Result. The security bods started watching as if their lives depended on it. My boss was pleased because this was part of my job brief and he had noticed it wasn't being 76 T H E R UL ES OF MANAGEMENT