Panic Disguised as Communication

One of my clients was a regional leader in a company that had spent most of the year cutting costs.

The bottom line had been bad, budgets got cut across the board, and now the whole leadership team had turned to sales. Every conversation came back to the number, and year end was getting close.

So the senior team did what almost every senior team does under that kind of pressure. They tightened the grip. More check-ins. More prep meetings. More follow-ups before the follow-ups. To them it felt like leadership.

What it actually did was push the executives’ fear straight down the organization, one status request at a time.

The cost fell on her level. She and the other regional leaders stopped leading their teams and started managing executive nerves. They spent their days getting ready for the next check-in instead of doing the selling the check-in was supposedly about. Everyone was busy, and the number didn’t move.

This is a lot more common than anyone at the top likes to admit. In a well-known Duke survey of 401 financial executives, about three in four said they’d give up long-term value to hit a short-term earnings target. Put one number in front of senior people with a date on it, and a lot of smart people start protecting the number at the expense of the business that produces it.

Here’s what the people at the top kept missing. The people closest to the customers already knew what to do. They didn’t need more instruction. They needed their leaders to stop sending fear down the line every time the forecast looked shaky.

The fix isn’t more communication. It’s less.

The most useful thing a senior leader can do under that pressure is ask one question and then get out of the way. What’s in your way, and can I remove it?

A check-in pulls authority up to the executive. That question hands it back to the people doing the work, and it tells them you trust them to get there.

Nobody at the top asked the regional leaders what was in their way. They asked for another update.

/Ulrika

P.S. Yes, the pink is on purpose. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this month UGA is donating to Cancerfonden’s Rosa Bandet in Sweden and to MD Anderson here in Texas.

Ladies, check your breasts and book the mammogram you keep pushing to next month.