Value Added Leadership

In professional services firms, by and large, the partners are expected to be actively productive in the sense that they get involved in content rich activities such as analysis of client issues, development of recommendations, writing articles for publication. In corporate environments, most especially in the larger ones, there often seems to be a different mindset along the lines of 'don't keep a dog and bark yourself' .

Many executives, as they rise through the ranks, seem to do decreasing amounts of productive work. Instead they indulge in the pleasures of doling out work and deciding between choices provided by others. The main mechanism for this form of work is meetings which, for those seeking to make an impression, are always back to back and run from dawn to dusk, conveniently leaving little time to do any real thinking or doing on their own part. John Kotter in his book What Leaders Really Do said that the average general manager only spends about 25% of working time alone (and this is mainly at home or travelling, hardly conducive to quality work), so the opportunity to not do much more than direct and choose is substantial. I think of this as a pyramid principle, where each additional layer adds weight and pressure to the layer below, without doing more than enhance the appearance of the total structure.

Even in these leaner times, where companies are squeezing quarts into pint pots with grim persistence, this pyramid principle does not seem to be diminishing (am I in danger of over mixing my metaphors here?). Although great leaders may be a rare thing, managers who can pass work around and make decisions on the back of others' efforts are two a penny. The leader who can both manage and do is a rarer thing altogether, but in this age of flexible structures and leaner workforces, isn't it time that we expected leaders to do more productive work themselves and be better at devolving responsibilities so that less time is required for 'oversight'? You never know, it might also have some spin off benefits in this world of shortened executive tenure and changing job market expectations in helping keep skills current and relevant to whatever is just around the corner.