As a manager, telling smart people "what to do" does not work. It might be what someone needs on their first day, but after that, it is a "no-no".

So how do we get stuff done?

The first step is to listen to your team's ideas and get them to listen to each other without crushing the ideas.

The next step is to develop the idea so it is ready to be debated.

Get relevant people to debate the idea, focusing on facts, not personalities or positions.

Deciding what to do based on the facts, not recommendations which tend to be emotional rather than fact-based. Deciding must be done quickly, but no too quickly, take a little time after debating but set a decision date. Empower your team by making the one closest to the problem the decider.

As the boss, it is good to get into the details of things from time-to-time. To to the source of facts, get down and dirty with the rest of the team and be prepared to challenge.

As only a few people will have been debating and deciding the next step is to persuade the whole team:

• Find out the listeners emotion and put that into the persuasion, i.e. what matters to them.
• Demonstrate expertise and humility in order to gain credibility.
• Show the logic of your decision.

Then the whole team needs to execute the decision.

The boss can help by avoiding time-wasting:

• Require meeting to start on time and stop them before they go on too long.
• Require people to be prepared for meetings and one-to-ones.
• Keep collaboration to required people, not everyone all the time
• avoid/help with red tape

As the boss, you need to keep practising the day-to-day work in order to be able to help and guide the team. Schedule time in your calendar for executing. Keep the balance between management, meetings and execution. Make sure the balance is right for your team as well.

Finally, you have to learn from the results, good or bad, before starting again at step one.

If the facts change then don't be afraid to change a decision, explaining what changed and why.

Avoid burn out or you cannot be the hub of all this activity.