I learned that first in the Army.
As a young NCO, I was responsible for people, equipment, standards and results. Rank gave me authority, but authority by itself did not make the work go well.
People needed clear expectations.
They needed the right tools and information.
They needed problems removed before those problems became excuses, delays or rework.
Years later, managing purchasing and operations, I found much the same thing.
I could spend my day issuing instructions.
Or I could ask a different question:
What is making it unnecessarily difficult for good people to do good work?
Sometimes the answer was a broken process.
Sometimes it was missing information.
Sometimes another department had created a bottleneck.
Sometimes the manager was the bottleneck.
Removing those obstacles usually accomplished more than another meeting or memo.
I did not think of this as a leadership philosophy at the time.
It was simply a practical way to take responsibility for the result.