Direct involvement
Are you spending too much time with your direct reports?
By Fred Koury
November 2007
At one of our recent events, Steve
Demetriou told our audience that
if he is spending a lot of time with his direct reports, then he has the
wrong people in those positions.
Demetriou, chairman and CEO of
Aleris International Inc., a $5 billion
metals company, really
struck a chord with that
comment. While it may
seem that the role of the
CEO should be to spend a
lot of time with his or her
direct reports, that’s not
really the case.
If you are spending a lot
of time managing your
management team, who’s
working on the major strategic issues
facing the company?
It’s always tempting to jump into the
fray and solve day-to-day problems,
particularly in the parts of the business
where you have a lot of experience. If
you came up through the ranks on the
sales side, there will always be the
temptation to meddle with sales and get
things done the way you used to do
them. But now you have someone else
that’s in charge of that function, and
you need to let that person do it his or
her way.
There’s always a time and place for
the CEO to get involved in the details,
but these opportunities need to be chosen carefully and should produce maximum results.
This goes back to Demetriou’s comment. If you are spending a lot of time
with a particular department head to
straighten things out, then you probably have the wrong person running that
department. Short-term fixes are fine,
but if it’s a regular occurrence, you
need to think twice about what is going
on.
You also have to give your key people the wiggle room to get the job
done. Give them the parameters in
which to operate, then get out of their
way.
The great American general George S.
Patton is credited with saying, “Never
tell people how to do things. Tell them
what to do, and they will surprise you
with their ingenuity.” Sure, you hold
them accountable for results, but if you
find the right people to begin with, then
you don’t need to be managing how they manage others. CEOs have their own
role to play within the
organization.
Some like to spend more
time with their front-line
people — who are closer to
customers — to stay current on trends and specific
needs. Some like to talk to
customers directly to make sure the
product and service offerings are relevant in a changing market. Others like
to tweak long-term plans and spend
time refining the corporate vision.
The point is, no matter how you prefer
to be spending your time, if you have
the right people in your key positions,
then you will have more time to focus
on the things that are most important
for the long-term success of your company.
So if you find yourself spending a lot
of face time with your direct reports,
you have to ask yourself two questions:
Am I micromanaging these people?
And, is this the right person for the job?
If the answer to the first question is
yes, then it’s a matter of trusting them
with the responsibility and the authority to get the job done — and hold them
accountable to that. If you aren’t micro-managing them but you’re still spending
a lot of time with them fixing problems,
then it might be time for evaluating
whether you have the right people in
your most important positions.
Ultimately, if you’re having to do their
jobs, then who is doing yours?
FRED KOURY is president and CEO of Smart Business
Network Inc. Reach him with your comments at (800) 988-4726
or fkoury@sbnonline.com.
