Managerial debt

Because confrontation can be uncomfortable, many managers procrastinate hard but necessary conversations with people they work with. While this trade-off makes life more pleasant in the short-run, it makes the inevitable discussions about necessary changes to someone's work or behavior much more difficult.

Beyond the original issue, managers owe an explanation for why they decided not to address it right away and they'll also need to clear up problems that created by people acting strangely before things had been resolved.

In other words, there's interest associated with this managerial debt. So, when given the choice of whether to deal with a managerial problem right away, be sure to consider whether the associated debt is worthwhile. Debt isn't bad in and of itself, but it should be used intentionally because when left unattended interest payments can quickly get out of hand.