One of the many
great speakers who come from the USA to run workshops with Vistage peer group
of CEOs, Ole Carlson, said that when he was a Vistage chairman he would put up
a banner at meetings reading:
“We only
do CEO stuff around here!”
The implication of
that simple statement is immense.
It all devolves on
the role of the leader and too often this is not an area of activity that is
given much thought.
In the normal run
of events most leaders attain the top position in the business through some
sort of functional route, whether they are an entrepreneur or a hired gun to
run the business.
Functional route
are perhaps finance, operations, sales, marketing, technical and there are
several others.
However the role
of the leader is quite different. It is
no longer functional; indeed it is truly multi-functional.
It often takes
some time to realise this fact when the leader is initially appointed. In fact I have known leaders (newly
appointed) say: “if that is all I have to
do I will be doing nothing half the time”.
Quite true in the
strict sense of the word because in the “doing
nothing” part of the working day, it actually gives the leader some time to
think.
Remember
thinking? It is that period of time in
which we manage to put the inevitable small stuff to one side and actually get down
to looking at the really important issues in the business.
A very good fiend
of mine, Will Kintish, decided more than ten years ago to give up being bored
as a Chartered Accountant and to start doing things that he would enjoy and
would inspire him.
Accordingly he set
up his own consultancy specialising in networking and very successful it has
been.
When we were
discussing how he intended to manage the business he said, categorically, that
he wasn’t prepared to do the stuff and he intended to hire someone else to do
it for him. This would and did release
him to do the things that he was good at rather than getting bogged down in
someone else’s job.
One of the
problems of every leader’s life is the very fact that they have come up through
the business in a functional role. The
consequence is that when things start to go amiss, as they do from time to
time, there is a likelihood that the leader will revert to the default
position; that is, to sort out the problem personally.
It is what I have
come to call the “leave it to me, I’ll
sort it out” syndrome which has two effects.
It makes the
leader think that he/she is still useful and indeed wanted, and secondly, stops
making them feel idle.
The overall result
is the dreaded “upward delegation”
which is the bane of every leader’s life if and when they recognise it.
The fact is that
the leader is almost certainly the only person in the business who actually
thinks about it in the round and this is a great responsibility.
I recall one of my
Vistage CEO members telling me the story of how he suddenly realised that he
was doing everyone’s jobs for them.
He had set up his
office open plan with his desk being in the centre of operations.
Accordingly he
found that being so visible made it easy for people to take the monkey off
their own backs and pass it on to his.
He was always happy and willing to help out, remember.
His great epiphany
was hiring three top rated senior people to cover finance, sales and operations
accepting, as he said, that they wouldn’t be able to do the job as well he
could but it would take a load off his working day.
He admitted
slightly shamefacedly, that in fact they did the jobs more effectively than he
could simply because they were specialist and knew precisely what they were
doing.
The answer for
every leader is to devote time to thinking about the businesses because no-one
else will do it nor are they in general capable of it. The role of the leader is highly specialised
and it takes time to consider what is the purpose of the business what are its
objectives and what is the potential endgame.
As the great US
golfer, Sam Snead said:
“Take time out to
smell the roses”
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