It is a well written post by my current Vice Chairman and CEO. I have very high regards for him, however, I have my own views on this topic. I think that
- Leaders need to first understand the nature of the crisis.
- Secondly, leaders need to be transparent to his / her organization to be able to know the exact nature of the crisis facing the organization.
- If the crisis is such that it might be a survival issue for the company, then most certainly the CEO should come out and lead from the front ensuring that the whole organization is behind him / her. Example, Lee Iacocca led from the front to save Chrysler in the early 80's from bankruptcy.
- However, if the crisis is such that it will affect business in a certain segment of the market, then the leader of that business segment might like to rally the "troops" beside him / her, not behind, to solve. Depending upon the personality of the leader, he / she might not be right up front, but might ask one of his / her trusted managers to be up front and call for the leader's help whenever required. The reason behind this suggestion is that if the leader does not allow his team members to rise up to the occasion and solve the crisis / problem, then the team members might not get a chance to rise up to be a leader in future. The leader should use such crises to develop his / her second line of command.
- The proposition that "The top of the pyramid is far from the realities on the ground and the organization's energy fields" might not be always true. This depends upon the leader and the organization design. My view is more the number of layers in the organization, the more fuzzy the reality becomes to the leader. Therefore, for the leader to be in the know of the ground realities necessitates a flatter and a real transparent organization. Ideally the CEO should not be more than 3 levels away from the front line. I have worked in organizations where the CEO is 7 or more levels away, and, obviously, has no clue of the ground realities because all the intermediate managers report up the ground realities in such a way that will save their back sides! And that is not what the leader / CEO needs or wants to hear. I know of several team leaders who are "afraid" to own up their own decisions and therefore bring their direct reports in front of them to own up such decisions; some others will use problem scenarios to their "political" advantage and improve their "image" to their superiors at the cost of their direct reports. In such cases, it does not make any sense to retain such managers. And consequently, ground realities do not get addressed the way they should have been addressed.
- In short, it is a good idea to lead from the trenches provided the organization design allows such a position. Otherwise it does not make any sense to do that. In such cases is it a good idea to let employees lead the organization to solve the crisis in hand? Sure, provided the employees are fully empowered to take decisions which were so long beyond their jurisdictions. A case in point is one of the large accounts that one of my friends was involved in. When the account was acquired there were several press releases about such a novel arrangement being made for the first time industry, analysts being briefed for a new "outsourcing model being evolved", everybody around were gung-ho about its future potential, and so forth. However, unfortunately the people below the leader level were not in close touch with the ground. What followed after the acquisition was over was an organization design that removed the front end employee, who had the full confidence of the client's senior management and decision makers, not only far from the leader but was also not allowed to make decisions that would have helped the relationship flourish. Intermediate managers used the ground level problems for self promotion at the expense of people below them. At the end of the day, my friend moved on because she did not want to be the "post office". That engagement value is now on a sharp decline, and people still involved don't know how to get out of the graves they themselves dug into. The point being made here is that it requires a flatter and more transparent organization to drive employees to make the right decisions. Not only that, the leader also needs to have the willingness to listen to the employee rather than get reports about the engagement health from his / her direct reports, and herein lies the magic formula in my view.
Management is an art, not a science. There is no right or wrong thing in management. As they say, "It all depends" upon the ground situation. The clearer the ground is to the leader, the better the management quality of the organization. It is the organization design that will help the leader get a clearer view of the ground, no matter how much is preached about the critical importance of the value zone.
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The views expressed above are solely that of the author's.
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