Mar 17 2026 — 06:03 pm

Is the Problem Gone?

By Ellen Raim

I watched a video recently where a manager described something I think is worth highlighting to early career professionals.

She asked her employee to get documents from their contact at another company that were crucial for an upcoming meeting.

Days later, when she had to follow up with the employee, what she heard was:
“I emailed them, but they haven’t responded.”

Technically, the employee was working on the assignment.
Practically, the deadline was near and the boss still had a problem.

That’s the disconnect this article is about.How you follow through on an assignment, shapes whether your boss sees you as a problem or a hero.  Your boss doesn’t merely assign tasks. They hand off problems and expect you to stay with them until you find a solution. That is when you are finished.

The Three Levels to Success: Activity, Task, Outcome

Let’s use that document example and really spell it out.

Boss: “Please get me the documents we need for next week’s meeting.”

  • Version 1 — Activity
    “I emailed them, but they haven’t responded yet.”
    Translation: I took one step. The problem still exists.
  • Version 2 — Task completion, without problem solution
    “I contacted them. They said they can send the documents, but not until a week after the meeting.”Translation: I completed the task as written, but I either did not understand the outcome, or I accepted a failed outcome. The problem still exists.
  • Version 3 — Outcome ownership
    “I contacted them and got no response, so I followed up and called. I’ll have the documents by end of day. I’ll confirm they’re the right ones and flag anything missing. You’ll have everything you need for the meeting.”
    Translation: The problem is handled. You don’t need to think about it any more.

You might hear leaders calling version 3 taking initiative. That phrase has been misinterpreted in social media as being asked to work extra hours or doing work outside your job description for which you are not compensated.  It is not that at all.

Initiative here is simply the difference between who finished an assignment and who decided they were done while the problem was still unsolved.

Research shows that people who anticipate and resolve problems, instead of just executing tasks, are seen as more valuable and are trusted with more responsibility. That’s what gets you pulled into more interesting work and considered for the next level separate from how many hours you work.

The employee in version 3 didn’t work harder; they thought differently about what ‘done’ means. They stopped thinking about finishing the task and started thinking about solving the problem.

Why This Isn’t Obvious When You Start Working

Maybe no one has explained this before, or maybe you haven’t had many chances to practice it.  But it is time to understand how your actions affect your boss.

  1. School trained you for “assignment completion”

In school, you were told to:

  • Follow the instructions.
  • Finish the assignment.
  • Stop.

You were graded on accuracy and completion, not on how much of the problem you took off someone else’s plate.

Surveys of employers regularly say recent Gen Z grads are unprepared for the workplace because they haven’t practiced basic job-readiness skills like navigating ambiguity, following through, and owning outcomes. This is a gap in translation between school and work.

  1. You may not have had a chance to practice
    Decades of research on involved parenting show that when adults step in too quickly to solve their children’s issues young people end up with less confidence in their own problem-solving and less practice moving from difficulty to solution. By the time many Gen Z workers get to their first job, they’ve had fewer opportunities to own a messy situation all the way from “this is a problem” to “this is under control.”
  2. You’ve gotten mixed messages online

A lot of work norms are now being learned from social media. Reports show that a large share of Gen Z use TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms as primary sources of career advice and job-related inspiration. Some of those messages are healthy:

  • Don’t tolerate exploitation.
  • Set boundaries.
  • Don’t give away free labor.

But those posts rarely add: “here’s how to be the person who reliably solves problems, so your boss sees you as a valuable part of the team.” Given the inconsistent quality of advice on social media, it’s understandable that when you hear that leaders are frustrated Gen z does not “show initiative,” it can sound like they expect you to do extra work for free.  As you can see, that is not what it means.

What Your Boss Is Actually Doing When They Hand You a Problem

I have heard some of you say, “If my boss is handing me his problems, doesn’t that just mean he doesn’t want to do his own work, and he is taking advantage of me?” In a healthy workplace, no, that is not the case.

Part of a manager’s job is to give their team members project responsibility.  That allows the manager to focus on higher-level decisions and strategy.​ Good delegation isn’t dumping work. It’s passing you a problem that is at your level to tackle, letting you figure out the steps and staying available to help if you hit something you can’t solve.​

Leadership tools and coaching resources consistently frame delegation as a good way to develop people. In most organizations, if your boss stops handing you problems to solve, that is a bigger worry.  It means they don’t think you can handle the work.  If they ask you to help them, they are giving you a chance to grow and show that you’re ready for more.

How This Makes You More Valuable

Let’s connect this directly to your career. Managers quietly sort people into categories:

  • Creates more work for me
  • Gets it done, nothing more
  • Takes problems off my plate

People who consistently take problems off their manager’s plate are trusted more, given more autonomy, and seen as stronger candidates for promotion. Managers don’t always track this consciously, but they remember who made their life easier when it matters.

None of this requires 60-hour weeks. It’s about how you use the hours you already work. For example:

  • You were going to send the email anyway. Outcome ownership just means you also think: “What will I do if they don’t respond?”
  • You were going to pull the data anyway. Outcome ownership means you take five extra minutes to notice a pattern and write one recommendation.

Same workday. Different level of ownership.

A Simple Rule You Can Start Using Tomorrow

Before you hand something back, ask yourself: “If the problem still exists, am I planning to stop here?” If the answer is yes, do one more thing. Tell your boss what you’d recommend as the next step. Most managers would rather have a thoughtful, imperfect recommendation they can tweak than a half-finished problem they must pick back up.

The key skill is owning outcomes instead of just doing tasks.

One Last Thought

You’re right to protect yourself from exploitation. There is data showing Gen Z already works unpaid hours and feels pressure to constantly prove themselves. So, this is not a call to sacrifice your evenings and weekends. It’s a call to change what “doing a good job” means inside your normal hours.

  • Not: “I completed a task.”
  • Not even: “I did exactly what you asked.”
  • But: “The problem is under control, and here’s what I recommend next.”

Getting ahead isn’t about doing more work. It’s about becoming the person who can be trusted to solve problems.

If the problem still exists, you’re not done.

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Resource List

Stagwell / Harris Poll. (2025). WHAT THE DATA SAY: 82% of managers say Gen Z lacks necessary job skills. Retrieved from https://www.stagwellglobal.com/what-the-data-say-82-of-managers-say-gen-z-lacks-necessary-job-skills/

Gen Z at Work?
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