When Leaders Drown in Details

As organizations grow, the workload increases for everyone, especially for the leader.

Hiring employees will help, but growth also brings a new challenge: leaders can find themselves increasingly pulled into the day-to-day details of the organization.

One of those challenges is what I call the operational undertow.

The captain of the ship gets be busy on the oars. The leader can get sucked into a swirl of important, but exhausting details. Like a dangerous undertow, operational detail can pull the leader under.

It can create positive energy when all hands are on deck. Employees might even cheer the leader on for being in the trenches, just as busy as everyone else.

But if the captain of the ship is busy on the oars, it means no one is manning the helm, scanning the horizon for the destination or dangers that lie ahead.

That is where leaders have to exercise caution. There is value in understanding the details of your organization, but the leader cannot stay there for long.

No one else in the organization is responsible for the kind of macro leadership that the CEO needs to provide. It can be helpful for a leader to see the micro details and how they fit into the overall picture, but they can’t stay there for long.

I once had a nineteen-year-old employee who asked me a very detailed operational question, to which I responded, “I don’t know.”

Feeling a bit snarky, she said, “You are the CEO. How do you not know?”

I gently explained to her the concept of willful ignorance. As the leader, I had to trust my employees to manage the details of the operation that I couldn’t afford to oversee.

The leader who occupies the visionary role needs to spend a significant amount of time seeing the landscape at the 30,000-foot level, ensuring the organization maintains its vision, fulfills its mission, and embodies its values.

This requires the leader to focus on the organization as a whole rather than being immersed in it.

You will need time to think about the work, to dream, and to work on the strategic plan.

There is still great benefit to simply walking around and checking in on employees and their work. Ask questions and listen. It will give you a sense of how people are doing and how the individual pieces fit together as a whole.

I recently had a situation that pulled me under. Make no mistake, it needed my attention, but it felt like I was at risk of drowning. Fortunately I could sense the signals and was able to pull back to an appropriate level of involvement.

As a leader it is helpful to know what is going on in the operation. In fact, it’s one of the ways we can love and care for our organizations.

But by all means, don’t allow the operational undertow to drown you.