As a CEO, you may be doing everything you can to engage and empower your employees: giving them the latest incarnation of AI, exploring flatter company structures, offering free lunches, letting people work remotely, etc.
But in reality, a lot of our good intentions as CEOs backfire. Even the smartest leaders can convince themselves that certain practices are for the good of the company—even though they just make our own jobs easier.
Let me give you examples of what I mean.
“We keep our organization nimble.”
I am continuously shocked by how many CEOs, even those of large, complex organizations, don’t set clear goals for the company. Lots of times, they will justify it by appealing to the need for agility and nimbleness. They feel like dictating goals to the company is going to demotivate people, give them tunnel vision, or make them miss opportunities. But these concerns are often an excuse. What the CEO really wants is absolution from the responsibility of defining priorities for the team.
A company can have defined goals and be nimble. If you just set a few hazy intentions for the next several years, you’re going to have a rudderless team with very low accountability to targets. It’s true that defining clear goals does cut off certain paths. Good priorities reveal what the organization is not going to do. This process isn’t always fun, but it is necessary. If something’s not working, then you can be nimble and pivot intentionally to a new approach. But you can’t start with ambiguity and claim it helps people be agile.
“We give our employees autonomy.”
This is another statement that sounds great but is often a mask for lack of organizational discipline. Employees need autonomy, but it should be granted within a framework of support and guidance. Every manager at your company must operate with a fine balance between (a) granting authority and freedom to employees and (b) setting clear expectations and offering direction.
The (a) side of this equation feels more virtuous to a lot of leaders, who see the label of “micromanager” as something to be avoided at all costs. But in truth, sometimes a leader who works closely with employees is preferable to the absentee manager, whose employees find themselves lost and frustrated. I often point to one study in which employees rated “unclear goals” as their TOP stressor at work. It wasn’t micromanagement that irked them most—it was lack of clarity from their manager. I think this describes a lot of today’s workforce. Leaders who use the “autonomy” excuse to abdicate their role are in many cases just adding stress while making their own job easier.
“We keep meetings to a minimum.”
Nobody likes unnecessary meetings, and they can be a drain on precious resources. But sometimes CEOs will use general anti-meeting sentiment to justify the fact that their managers rarely have 1-on-1 meetings with employees. My general recommendation is for managers to have a 1-on-1 with each of their direct reports weekly or biweekly—and that adds up to a good chunk of the manager’s time. But it is time well spent. Every employee deserves dedicated time with their manager: to work through problems, to receive coaching, to discuss their development and career plans. It’s easy to let 1-on-1s fall by the wayside when things get busy, but skipping them is a very bad way to save time.
Few of us go into leadership with bad intentions. But we should also be vigilant and ensure that our good intentions aren’t cover for taking the easy path. If you’ve noticed yourself or other leaders paving the road to the netherworld with seemingly benevolent pronouncements, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.