The Leadership Bullseye!

Leadership is a continuum and guiding your team to their sweet spots on it is the CEO’s first order of business

If you’re the CEO of a small-to-medium-sized company looking to make the move to adolescence, your first order of business ought to be assessing your leadership team; not simply for general skill set or experience but for their comfort levels on what I call the “leadership continuum.”

The continuum implies that all of us have more or less ability or inclination to be a leader and that the further out in time you are comfortable thinking and performing, the greater capacity you have for strategy or vision. Not everybody can be a visionary; companies need people whose “sweet spots” fall all along the spectrum, from tactical, to managerial, directorial, strategic and visionary.

But, as you’ll see from Figure 1 below, entrepreneurial environments tend to compress the timelines for everybody, leaving little time or brainpower for longer-term planning. This happens because small, entrepreneur-led companies often carry too many “vice presidents,” who are awarded for their loyalty and good work and less for their ability to be strategic.

The more strategic the role in the company, the further out ahead you need to think, right? Entrepreneurial companies often lose sight of this due to an “all hands on deck” mindset and the founder / CEO’s investment in the company.

The problem arises when promotions effectively take leaders out of their sweet spots, which may involve a more tactical, day-to-day focus — the title they have doesn’t match what they are doing or what their expectations are day in and day out. In these cases, I sometimes show leaders Figure 2 below and ask them to point to where they feel most comfortable. More often than not, they indicate a spot below their title.

When I took the reins at my previous company, I had two true vice presidents in place — although there were many who held the title of “Vice President.” I spent the better part of a year hiring new vice presidents for human resources, sales, marketing and operations, as well as reassigning the current ones to positions more in line with their sweet spots. Only then could we begin to set and implement strategy to meet the company’s ambitious growth targets. All in all, it was about a five-year endeavor, but we did end up looking like Figure 2 where we had 90% of our leaders properly titled and operating in a manner consistent with their abilities.

Think of the different roles within your organization as links in a strategic chain of command, divided into time frames that organize activities and objectives.

Here, with the benefit of hindsight, are descriptions of the different points on the leadership continuum for a typical functional area, let’s say Sales, at an adolescent company ($15 — $100 million).

• Sales Associates spend the day meeting or speaking with customers, processing orders, getting trained on new products and meeting individual benchmarks. Their sweet spot is the day-to-day and week-to-week.
• Sales Managers spend the day ensuring that associates have the regular support they need to meet their individual goals so the team can meet departmental benchmarks. The manager’s sweet spot is on the week-to-week and month-to-month.
• Sales Directors bridge the gap between the tactical and strategic. This makes them ideally suited to “own” the national sales meeting every six months. Reporting to their vice president, they define the meetings’ key themes, training exercises, speakers and team-building activities. Their sweet spot is quarter-to-quarter and semi-annual sales benchmarks.
• The Vice President of Sales is a strategic partner to the CEO and has ultimate responsibility for the sales model, channel mix, as well as staffing and compensation for their team. If the organization isn’t meeting benchmarks, the VP is ultimately responsible for adjusting strategy and planning future changes. Their sweet spot is semi-annual to eighteen months out.
• The CEO is looking at the big trends in the industry and how they will impact sales as well as other areas of the company. In this way, the CEO is connecting dots: how many sales resources should the company put into this product category or that one? Should Sales move into new channels? How can operations and marketing support this effort over not one but two, three or more years? The CEO’s sweet spot is 1–3 years and, if they have real vision, much longer.

As you can see, success at each level depends on the right kind of contribution from preceding levels. If the CEO or VPs are trapped in (or lured by) the day-to-day, they’re too busy to lay track for future growth.

Once you’ve got your team correctly aligned along the leadership continuum, with each member working in timeframes for which they’re best suited, you’re ready to establish a “rhythm” for the meetings that will enable you to run your company on a daily basis and plan for the future.

Being strategic is like brushing your teeth: it doesn’t work when you just do one or two big brushes before seeing the dentist! You have to work at it steadily, all year. Getting leaders in their sweet spots is so important for the CEO wishing to drive strategy at any size company.

Do you suffer from having leaders in the wrong spots or with the wrong titles in your company? How do you deal with this?

Robert U. Craven

Managing Partner, Findaway Adventures

Enjoy this article? If you would like to see simple, practical tips in your inbox every week sign up for TwoTip Tuesday to help scale your change-the-world business.

PS: All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore , who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!