It's human nature to feel proud or have some sense of ownership of something that you have created and this is certainly true in the computing world where programmers will feel a sense of pride and ownership about some code that they've designed, coding that they've implemented and deployed. It's important for Managers to be aware of this and let the right people do the right job and at the right time. In other words, the Managers may have some form of technical knowledge but this almost certainly won't be as good as, or certainly respected, by the programmers themselves. So my suggestion is; Managers pose the topic or the problem in question and allow the programmers to "own" the problem space, to devise the solutions and then be responsible for them. In converse the wrong way to do it, is for the Manager to make some "pseudo implementation" with limited technical skills, which are then followed through by the programmers who will feel ...