Are your Executives working below their pay grade?

Are your Executives working below their pay grade?

Senior executives getting involved in the day-to-day running of the business, be it deliberately or unwillingly, may not on the face of it, be a major issue but it is in fact, a classic symptom of an organisation out of control.
If senior executives are spending the time on day-to-day issues, it first begs the question, who in the organisation is focusing on the business strategy and driving the business forward; and second, what are the middle managers doing?

Organisations must have the capability to manage the future at the same time as dealing with the daily operational demands. This requires clearly defined roles and responsibilities: the senior executive should be responsible for developing the business plans and strategy, whilst the middle managers and frontline staff are in charge of executing them.

The distinction between these two roles is the business horizon; the outlook of the senior executive being mid-long term whilst middle management focuses on the shorter term. This is a distinction without which, unplanned events and fire fighting are the norm, and routine things don’t happen routinely. Typically, such organisations share the same characteristics:

• Functional ‘silos’ resulting in lack of integration of core business processes
• Unrealistic plans
• Inaccurate data
• Lack of process measurement and the related process improvement
• A workforce with poor understanding of businesses processes, and their roles and responsibilities

Middle managers and team leaders are paid to manage weekly and daily operations of the business and must be left to do so, whilst the senior executive steers the ship. However it isn’t unusual for executives to have been promoted to their positions because they were good at fire fighting. These executives often feel more comfortable, even enjoy, operating in such environments. It is important to recognise the executive who deliberately starts fires, so he or she can experience the satisfaction of managing the crisis and being seen to save the day.

The danger for these fire-fighting executives is summed up by the words of one wise company director who said: “If I have got two people doing the same job, I have a good opportunity to get rid of the most expensive one.”

An organisation that can’t gain control of its everyday business processes and get to a state where ‘the routine things happen routinely’ faces serious threat of being outperformed by the competition.

There is incentive for everyone to gain control and start managing the future.
 

Mike Reed, Partner, Oliver Wight Asia Pacific