Stepping Above The Fray To See The Big Picture

One of the qualities of an effective leader is being able to see the big picture rather than just the immediate situation. I have a story that I have told repeatedly to my teams over the years. Many years ago, I attended an Executive Leadership training class. We had the Senior leaders ---- including the current CEO who was in transition and his successor ---- come in and talk about their leadership styles. One of the leaders who came in was the corporate Comptroller from the Finance organization. She shared with us what she indicated was the most important leadership lesson of her career. My company was spinning off a large part of the business into a whole, new publicly traded company. The announcement had come in the Fall of the previous year and due diligence plans had been made to align resources into the new structure and then to be able to run in a parallel mode (per SEC requirements) before the spin-off in the Fall of the current year. Before the Christmas holidays of the previous year, everyone had gone home believing the due diligence plans were good and all that needed to happen was to formally align the resources during the first half of the year and run in parallel mode for the Summer quarter before the spin off in the Fall of the current year.  In other words, the expectation was to just execute on the due diligence timeline.

Sometimes plans have flaws.

In January, the team realized that the SEC requirement was to operate in parallel for 6 months instead of just 3 months. Big flaw, lesson 1 --- you cannot afford the blame game. Sometimes you must figure out the flaws and root cause later. Bottom line, the resource alignment had to occur during the first quarter of the year instead of the first two quarters that had been part of the due diligence timeline.

Our Comptroller, let’s call her Macy, said her leadership style was one of rolling up her sleeves and getting into the trenches to help her team get the required jobs done. Her direct report team knew what needed to be done, they just had half the time to do the resource alignment portion of the plan. Macy said she was in the trenches with the team and actually making a solid contribution to the tasks being accomplished when one of her direct reports sat her down and told her that the team needed something different from her.

He indicated that they appreciated the help and she was really helping, but there was a problem. He said, “We really need you to be looking at the big picture and keeping us all aligned. If you are in the trenches with us, we may get off course. We do not have the luxury of time to be able to adjust and move forward. We really just have one chance to get this right. You can help us the most by looking at the big picture and making sure that we are all marching to the same plan. We may need to make some real-time tweaks, but we need someone to make sure all the steps and tweaks are aligning to a plan that makes us successful.” 

Macy said that it stunned her.

He was right. There are times when rolling up your sleeves and getting in the trenches to help accomplish the task for your team is the absolute wrong thing to do. Someone needs to remain above the fray and to make sure that everyone is doing their part, accomplishing the tasks that are necessary to be successful, coordinating all of the often-interdependent tweaks that need to be done, and making sure everyone is aligned and motivated to the current plan.

Every ship needs a captain. Be the captain.

We like to “fix” things. Get dirty trying to guide us to success. A leader needs to be able to see the big picture and the little picture simultaneously. The leader cannot get lost in the labyrinth. We bring on team members that are qualified and capable of doing their part and we need to give them the freedom to do that. Coach as necessary. Assist or provide additional resources as needed, where needed. Being able to give difficult feedback, as appropriate. But above all, make sure we are leading above the fray. The captain must guide the ship. They can step in and assist the ship’s operation as necessary, but at the end of the day the captain is the one responsible for getting the ship, the crew, and the cargo safely into port.

The Captain must be above the fray. He has that telescope on the bridge for a reason..