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| Time to Get Real by Mike Wagner |
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“You should work on your organization not in your organization!”
This advice, given to any leader, is similar to telling most of us that we need to lose a few pounds. Yeah, we know! The head tells us to work on our organization, but we still find ourselves “in the weeds” of the daily work.
So, how do you go from simply understanding how important it is to work on your business to actually doing it? Start by facing what holds you back:
The Curse of Expertise - You weren't born a CEO. You started out at some entry level position back at your first job in high school – or before. You moved on to other jobs; avoiding what you didn't like and gravitated toward your interests and that at which you excelled. Perhaps you received some formal training in this discipline and gained a proven form of expertise.
The result is that you see your company’s challenges through whatever “expert lens” you have been wearing all these years. For example, if your background is from the world of finance, it’s a financial problem; if you are from operations, it’s an operational problem; if you’re in sales or marketing, it’s a sales/marketing problem.
Seeing your organization only through this narrow lens of your expertise impairs your ability to work on the business and see the bigger, enterprise-wide issues.
Addicted to Drama - Some leaders see themselves as “fire fighters”. Every day is a new adventure in rescuing a project, heroically meeting deadlines, and miraculously coming up with solutions to problems.
If you are this kind of leader, you are never bored, but you are also unlikely to set aside the adrenaline rush of today’s crisis to work on the business.
Fire prevention is not in your vocabulary. So working on your company is not on your schedule either.
Foggy About What’s Important - To get the most out of the finite, non-renewable resource of time you have to know what is important. If everything is important, then nothing is important.
Some leaders treat every business decision, purchase and new hire as “important enough” for them to be involved. Moving from one important meeting to the next, they get involved in everything.
I know of a CEO who spent hours deliberating on the color of the carpet for the reception area. The decision was important, but was it more important than working on the business?
Working on your business is the hardest, most demanding and, at times, frustrating thing any leader and leadership team can do. It means courageously facing the brutal facts - not just about the company, but also about you as a leader. It means tough conversations and challenging cherished assumptions.
It is time to get real with yourself, take a look in the mirror, and declare “It’s time for me and my team to work on the business.”
It won’t happen any other way.