I think that seeing idiots try to use the tools you use all the time (and take for granted) is maybe more depressing than seeing them try to use tools that you don’t know about.
“take 15 minutes at the end of the week to write me an email that I can read in 5 minutes that tells me what you’ve accomplished, what is in your way, and how you are feeling about what is ahead” is a management tool that has been around since at least the 1980s. It’s called a 5-15 and I first learned about it in a book by Paul Hawken called Growing a Business that talks about how Smith-Hawken became a big company faster than they were ready to be, and how they coped.
I’ve used 5-15s in every position I’ve had, either to send my boss what he or she needs to know about what I’m doing, or to keep track of how my directs were doing. The last time I used it as a boss, my directs had a markdown template and they just had to fill it out and commit their report to git and an action triggered to compile it into a team report I (or anyone else) could read via RSS.
But the whole point is to create a vehicle that a subordinate can get important-but-not-urgent information in front of their boss so that their boss can boss for them — run cover, clear obstacles, create opportunities. I added a set of mental health questions during COVID lock down to give people a low-key way to say they were struggling with isolation or depression or with the tear gas from Black Lives Matter protests getting in their apartment because the windows were cheap and didn’t seal well. Its a tool for leading.
Only an idiot would use it as a tool for intimidation or abuse. The kind of idiot that confuses managing things for leading people.