When an executive operates in the weeds everyone suffers

A few weeks ago, on 2 separate occasions, I wrote about how the vertical structure affects individual employee performance and how jams and gaps impact people personally. For example, when you find yourself in a jam-up, you may feel as though your manager is interfering with your work or competing with you, acting more like a colleague or competitor sharing the workload. It’s not uncommon to see up to three layers in a single reporting chain, and sometimes more, all competing for the same tasks, creating a highly ineffective and unproductive work environment.

 A gap occurs when a manager is too distant from or out of touch with a direct report’s work. When you are in a gap situation, a level of work is missing. The manager might say, “I feel like I’m spending too much time explaining what I need to my direct report, yet they don’t seem to grasp it.” The direct report may respond, “My boss is never around when I need them. No matter what I do, it’s wrong. I wish my boss would return to reality and provide me with the direction and support I need.” 

But what happens when these dynamics are experienced at the organizational level? This may sound like a strange statement, but it begins with an organizational reality that no employee can operate at a higher level than their manager. If that manager happens to be an SVP with hundreds or thousands of people working for them and is performing work below the level they should be operating at, then those thousands of people will be operating below that level as well. This organizational reality has nothing to do with the capability or motivation of those thousands of employees; it has everything to do with the fact that a senior executive is operating too close to the ground.

For example, a number of years ago, a services company with over 10,000 employees experienced an operational disaster when an executive was operating 2 levels below the required level for their role. This executive was a direct report to the CEO and led the business's technology portfolio. The expectation was that he would work at a general management level, anticipating and shaping the technology needs for the future as the company served businesses and consumers from sea to sea. This VP focused on the day-to-day performance of each department, setting expectations for weekly and monthly performance for the directors and managers reporting to him. The executive operated in a gap with the CEO and compressed or jammed up his direct reports’ work. 

Instead of working together to ensure the technology capabilities met the business's current and future needs, these managers focused on their departments' day-to-day operations, never looking at what their peers were doing. As a result, technology operations focused on this week’s numbers and did not ensure that capacity was available as new apps and technology services were added to the system. It failed to provide the data infrastructure necessary to support the business’s growth. Then one day the billing system crashed, and the business lost all of its accounts receivable records. It never fully recovered those records and lost millions in revenue as a result of the oversight. 

When roles at the senior executive level are not operating at the right level, the impact can undermine the contributions of hundreds of role holders throughout the business. The opposite is also true. When a senior executive is fully capable of doing their job, they can make room for people in their organizations to flourish.

If you would like to learn more about designing organizations for success, I’m excited to share that my new book, STRUCTURE THAT WORKS: The CEO’s Practical Guide to Organization Design, is now published and available on Amazon or go to www.structurethatworks.com.