590 Stay On The Tools For As Long As You Can When Leading In Japan

The usual advice is to get off the tools and concentrate on being the leader and focus your energies getting leverage from the team who work for you. This makes a lot of sense because as the leader we are supremely busy these days and the pace of business in only speeding up and growing more complex.  It also depends on how big your company is.  When you get large numbers of people working for you, then the chance of doing anything other than attending meetings basically dries up. And this is exactly the problem.

Without noticing it we have been consumed by the beast and we now live in its belly. We are surrounded on all sides by our own team members.  We might meet clients, but usually they are not our client and belong to one of the troops.  We are there for ceremonial purposes and not to seal the deal. We live at the margins of the business and we are gradually separated from knowing what is really going on.

Some leaders may protest and tell me they know what is going on because their Division Heads, their direct reports, tell them.  I would answer that what your Division Heads are telling you is what they want you know and that may not necessarily be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

It may be difficult, but where possible I would recommend keeping a couple of clients for yourself.  That way you keep your hand in with the market, the issues, the problems, the ups and downs of the flow of business.  You are getting this news unfiltered and your clients are telling you like it is, with no sugar coating.  More than couple of clients will be logistically very hard. We can all probably manage a couple and the intelligence we hear from these sources will be very valuable. We can also evaluate more effectively what our own staff are telling us.

There is no doubt that the boss hears the bad news last, because everyone is hell bent on covering it up for as long as possible.  But as the boss we operate on a different plane.  We know we have the power, money and resources to fix problems and the faster we find out about the issue the less costly it is for us to fix it.  So we have staff motivations and our own going in different directions.

There is nothing worse than thinking our systems are certainly correct, to only find out that is not the case.  We assume things are being put in place as part of the overall ecosystem, but actually there can be gaps.  We don’t discover these gaps fast enough when we rely on others to tell us about the gap. In fact, think back to the last time someone on the team told you about the gap compared to when you unearthed it yourself?  I am struggling to remember when that happened because it is so rare.  The snapper there is if no one is volunteering this information then how do  we discover it?

This is where keeping your hand in the game comes in handy.  We are more likely to see problems or imperfections is we remain part of the process.  I was reminded of this recently.  I had been teaching our High Impact Presentations Course which has two days in the classroom, then a follow-up half day, a twenty eight week self-paced programme so that the class participants don’t forget what they learned and a monthly Professional Ongoing Education class.

As I was talking about these things at the very end of the class, I saw some blank faces. That set off a warning siren in my head to check how we keep people informed about the follow-up programme.  And not just for this programme, but for all of them.  If I hadn't been teaching that class, I may not have found this gap at all or for many months.  We try to really work on providing added value beyond the class content, but all of this effort is wasted if people don’t know about it. 

I think I have systems in place to make sure the communication is working smoothly, but sometimes it isn’t and I have to fix it.  The scary part is I only ever fix the gaps I know about and what happens to all the gaps I don’t know about?  There is a cost to being on the tools but also some clear benefits. So take a look at your work and see where you can keep a hand it without the work devouring you.