I may be missing the context for this article, as I find myself strongly disagreeing with the management fole described above.

First, it is the manager's responsibility to schedule work for his people. If people are over tasked, it is a failing of the manager. A manager may not have control of changes in tasks, but he can defer starting on particularly volatile tasks.

Second, in order for a manager to schedule work for his people, he must know their current status. It is absolutely imperative that the manager ask, "Show me where you are at." This gives the manager the information to help decide whether to assign a new task, continue the existing task, provide additional manpower, defer or kill the task.

Third, although I am strongly in favor of a manager show someone how to do something new or how to walk paperwork through the bureaucracy (as many times as it takes to teach them how), I do not think the manager should be doing pieces just because the employee might think those pieces are not interesting. Teach, don't do.

It is the manager's responsibility to get other people to do work without overburdoning them or under-utilizing them.