Five Questions for Leaders Who Are at Their Limits
Earlier this week, I was talking with an executive who's recently been promoted to run a business unit that earlier this decade was generating a few million dollars a year in revenue and this year will gross a few hundred million dollars. Through acquisitions and organic growth, the business could be twice its current size in a few more years. As we were talking about the changes she might have to make in her leadership style as the business grows, I remembered a conversation I had last year with another executive who was facing the same sort of situation.
In this earlier case, a senior executive of a real estate company explained to me that he was responsible for properties that generated $500 million in revenue and that because of reorganizations in the company he was going to now be responsible for $1 billion worth of properties. He told me that in the previous year he had travelled 225 days to appear at one property after another and he didn't know how he was going to pull off overseeing twice as many properties. My response was that one thing we knew for sure was that he wasn't going to travel 450 days in the upcoming year.
That was the ah-ha moment for him. He recognized that the natural limits of time were going to force him to change his approach. Oftentimes leaders get so caught up in the doing that they don't stop to assess whether or not what they're trying to do is actually physically possible. In his case, being personally present at every property in his business unit over the course of a year just wasn't possible. My observation that you can't travel 450 days in one year was the trigger for him to step back and reassess.
Maybe you're in a similar situation. Here are five questions you can ask yourself to assess your leadership situation and determine what your options are around the highest and best use of your time as a leader.
Question 1:
What am I trying to do that extends beyond the actual time available to me to personally do it?
Question 2:
What am I trying to accomplish by doing that?
Question 3:
Given the role that I'm in, what should I be trying to accomplish instead?
Question 4:
What resources (people, systems, processes) do I need to acquire or develop to cover whatever still seems worthwhile in my answer to Question 2?
Question 5:
What opportunities do I have to shift from retail leadership (being personally present or involved in everything) to wholesale leadership (leveraging and involving others to act on the overall plan)?
What are you noticing about limits lately? What are you doing to adjust? I'd love to hear your thoughts and stories about changes you're making to deal with the limits leaders face.
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ABOUT THIS BLOG
Executive coach Scott Eblin’s goal is to help you succeed at the next level of leadership. Throughout the week, he’ll offer his take on the leadership lessons in the news and his advice on your most pressing leadership questions. A former government executive, Scott is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and is the author of The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success.
Scott, the inability of new leaders to make that transition from a do-it-yourself mode of operation says, in effect, to the rest of the organization, "I don't trust you to get the job done." That has severe implications which can doom the enterprise to failure. Letting go is a sure sign that the new leader is truly ready to lead.
Mike Greenberg Posted Thursday, September 17, 2009 6:50 AMTrain em, trust em, and delegate delegate delegate wisely.
rooster Posted Thursday, September 17, 2009 9:52 AMI have noticed that this is a particularly difficult transition for attorneys to make. There is something in our professional DNA that renders it very difficult to resist tunneling down to the micro-retail level of projects while we neglect the larger picture. We win battles but lose wars (internal and external).
Bill Posted Thursday, September 17, 2009 10:29 AMTherein lies the problem. For too long, the government relies on attorneys to do...well, everything. What do attorneys know about suing? A LOT! What do attorneys know about the law? A LOT! What do attorneys know about running a business, balancing a budget or cutting costs? Very little.
The federal government needs to leave the business running to BUSINESS PEOPLE and keep the lawyers out of the mix. A lot would be solved in short order.
Signed,
Someone who will NEVER vote for a lawyer AGAIN.
Jennifer Posted Thursday, September 17, 2009 12:16 PMAnother question: is senior management asking themselves these questions when new requirements are mandated from Congress or DoD? Often, I have found that management wants to do the right thing, but the requirements from above are impossible to implement with available resources and mission priorities. It is senior management's responsibility to be honest in assessing their capabilities and let their leaders know when something can't be done, rather than implementing policies that set up middle managers and employees to fail.
audit manager Posted Thursday, September 17, 2009 1:34 PMMost likely the reason mgrs, especially new mgrs, micro manage is because they know they can be successful at the little things but they are a bit afraid of the big picture stuff.
Big Jake (ret. 2008)
Big Jake Posted Tuesday, September 22, 2009 9:32 PM