Hoarding the interesting work

The problem I find most interesting is the one I should hand to someone else.

A senior person who takes every hard problem for themselves creates two costs. Their team never gets the chance to learn how to handle hard problems. And the whole team ends up depending on one person's calendar, vacation included.

I catch myself doing this. I see an interesting problem, and my first instinct is to solve it myself. Now I treat that instinct as a signal instead. The work I most want to keep is the work someone else needs to grow.

Handing it off feels like a loss in the moment. Later, it looks like the opposite.

People also surprise you. Give someone a hard problem and they often find a better answer than you would have. That happens more now, because tools like AI agents make the line between roles thinner. Someone outside your specialty can solve a problem that used to need you.