Understanding Change

If you are going to manage a task, you will take control of that task and guide it with skill and authority towards a specific objective.  If that task is a problem that is easily identifiable, and the objective is one which is easily reachable, you will be able to manage it effectively without too much bother or difficulty.
If the task is even a little more complex or the objective a little less reachable so that a tool or machine is required to take the task to the objective, you still can manage it as long as you have developed the skill and expertise in using that tool or machine.
When, however, the task is the productivity and capability of another human being, (subordinate, adolescent, or client), and the objective is such a complex factor as the efficient management of some part of this vast and constantly changing common environment, success becomes a little more elusive.  When the tool or machine for reaching that task (the person's capabilities) is also the independently activated skills, training, and ambition of the person himself (herself) management becomes governed by a totally different set of rules.  It no longer can be the simple application of one rule that has worked somewhere else. Nor is it the attempts to seduce the person with prizes that may have attracted someone else.   Rather, it is the ability to approach each person as an individual and each task as a complex interplay of multiple factors to be managed, not by pretending that one or the other can be made to be stable, but by attempting to understand them as they change.
Thus, if you believe that the task of managing other people lies in being able to manipulate them as implements for you to reach the common objective, you also will see that success is made complex and frequently impossible by the very independent nature of the implements.    If, however, you see the task of managing or relating to people as guiding these other people into managing their responsibilities themselves, or into producing effective solutions which can be shared and applied to the common responsibility, you will perhaps be more prepared to solve the two most difficult aspects of this management problem, those of identifying the task and using the tools.
Since, at this point, you are interested in how the other person is able to manage the problem, your challenge is not the problem but the person, namely that person's capacity for managing the problem.  This is something you cannot measure.  You cannot measure where any single person begins.  You cannot measure how far that person may have developed.  You know only that each person begins at point zero and that each person progresses at an independent rate.  That person's capabilities are hidden, known only to himself (herself).
As a responsible person, you have a task to accomplish, but the task has not been properly defined because you cannot be sure where your starting point is or even whether you will have completed the task.
In addition, even this ill-defined task of guiding other people or another person into becoming more capable or productive is further compounded by the independence with which each person may activate his (her) skills and desires.   The tools, that is, the skills, knowledge, and motivation of the people themselves, which you must use to help them manage a problem effectively, are not accessible to you.
The human being is a self-driven force.    He (she) cannot be turned on and off or intentionally guided as can be done with a machine like a motorcar.  The human being cannot be loaded with immediately relevant information and used to manipulate that information as can be done with a computer.  The human being is so independent that, regardless of how urgently you may need his or her performance, you cannot simply make it happen.   You must wait for that person to want to produce, and to accept responsibility for the management of the task.  It is this combination of the undetermined task added to the inaccessible tools that makes people management the most difficult management task there is.
The objective of Management.
The ultimate objective in the management of any task is usually the attempt to improve its presentation, the way we see it anyway. In a similar way, the ultimate objective in managing another human being is the attempt to improve his or her presentation of his or her skills and understanding.   This translates as improved productivity in business, improved social awareness in families, improved consideration in friendship, and improved educational skills in schools.
You will see later that the main asset of the human being is that person's ability to make a contribution to the world by formulating ideas and expressing them.  In short, people must be productive.
People are not born productive.  We are born, however, with the capacity to be productive.   When that capacity is nurtured, the human being becomes more than an extension of a person with greater vision, of a business, or of society in general.  He or she becomes a self-driven source of information and perception.
If, then, the ultimate objective of managing or relating to other people is to nurture their understanding of a particular situation and help them to be more productive, the task of management becomes the task of being a competent authority on the areas in which you must lead them, being able to communicate with them, and being able to motivate them to share your vision and manage their tasks competently and independently.
It must be done in that sequence.  Remember, you cannot reach the tools.  You must reach people and stimulate them into using their tools.  You cannot store your information into other people or inject them with your skills.  You must let them use the tools which they have and which you have helped them activate to increase their knowledge and skills to accomplish the task.
Of course, this means that you must be able, not only to guide the other people, but to allow them full responsibility for accomplishing the task, you being only the facilitator to the development of their capacity for making that accomplishment.  Thus, the objective of people management is the development of other people, not using them as extensions of yourself.
If you can accept  that your task, in managing or relating to another person, is the nurturing of that other person, and in order to accomplish  that task you need to learn how to reach and facilitate that person's independence, you will have realized the most important difference between the management of a physical task and the management of people.
The abstract nature of people as a task requires that you approach them with respect for their personal visions, recognition of their developed skills and understanding, and faith in their potential as independent human beings.
Of course, this means that on the other side of your desk sits a force that may already be a formidable asset, or one which can be nurtured into being such an asset with the proper respect and guidance.
Usually, therefore, it is a cinch to manage people or to take the mature role in relating to them.   Unlike the car or the computer which needs your direct input in order for them to produce anything,  people,  by  being  self-driven, are theoretically capable of holding their own and managing the task with their own initiative.