What Should Senior Leaders Spend Their Time Doing?
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Ryan Scholz
Apr 12, 2010, 11:25:03 AM4/12/10
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Article Title: What Should Senior Leaders Spend Their Time Doing?
Author: Ryan Scholz
Word Count: 600
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=380053&ca=Leadership
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=380053
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=380053
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A challenge for small business owners like myself is spending enough time working on the business. Most of our time is spent working in the business. Senior leaders of larger organizations face the same issue. It is very easy to get caught up in the day to day operations of a business at the expense of spending adequate time doing the things that senior executives should be doing.
An activity that I have participants in my executive leadership program do is to keep a log of how they spend their time for five working days. When they analyze where they actually spend their time and compare it to where they feel that they should be spending their time, huge gaps appear in those strategic activities required to improve business performance in the long term.
Strategic activities center on four main areas�vision, values, long term direction, and resource allocation. Senior leaders should be spending a large percentage of their time in these four areas. Much has been written about the importance of vision in determining the long term success of an organization. As Jim Collins and Jerry Portas reported in Built To Last, visionary companies out performed peer companies that lacked a compelling vision. I have found that most companies have created some form of vision statement. However, most think that the job is done when the statement is completed and posted on the wall. The real work of senior leadership is to communicate the vision and to use powers of persuasion to get everyone in the organization committed to achieving the vision. This is a continuous activity that is the responsibility of senior leadership and cannot be delegated to lower level management.
Values are those things which govern personal behavior in an organization. The stronger the values, the less the need for policies and procedures manuals and management intervention into every decision made in the organization. Values are learned by people in the organization by observing the behavior of the senior leaders. For example if they see senior leaders working closely together as a team, employees are more likely to exhibit high levels of teamwork. Likewise, if they see senior leaders openly critical and non supportive of their peers, then there will likely be a �silo mentality� in the organization. The role of senior leadership is to clearly communicate values and to reinforce with their own personal behavior as well as what they do or do not tolerate in the behaviors of others.
Senior leaders are responsible for considering the long term implications of every key decision that they make. It requires the ability to look beyond today, and to have a clear sense of the direction of the organization. A crucial element of establishing the strategy and long term direction of the organization is developing the vital few goals that must be achieved. We call these the critical success factors of the organization. The senior leaders are responsible for defining the critical success factors and constantly monitoring progress towards achieving them.
The resources of the organization are the responsibility of senior leadership to allocate. Resources are financial, human, and physical and are always limited. The role of senior leaders is to apply these resources to the right things that move the organization towards achievement of its goals. Often this requires challenging the status quo with respect to resource allocation.
Examine how you spend your time as a senior leader. Is it focused is these four areas�vision, values, long term direction, and resource allocation?
About The Author: Ryan Scholz works with leaders whose success is dependent on getting commitment and high performance from others. He is author of Turning Potential into Action: Eight Principles for Creating a Highly Engaged Work Place. For more information, visit his web site at http://www.lead-strat-assoc.com.
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=380053
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
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Message delivered directly to members of the group:
publish-the...@googlegroups.com
*****************************************************************
Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Ryan Scholz
*****************************
IMPORTANT - Publication/Reprint Terms
- You have permission to publish this article electronically in free-only publications such as a website or an ezine as long as the bylines are included.
- You are not allowed to use this article for commercial purposes. The article should only be reprinted in a publicly accessible website and not in a members-only commercial site.
- You are not allowed to post/reprint this article in any sites/publications that contains or supports hate, violence, porn and warez or any indecent and illegal sites/publications.
- You are not allowed to use this article in UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) or SPAM. This article MUST be distributed in an opt-in email list only.
- If you distribute this article in an ezine or newsletter, we ask that you send a copy of the newsletter or ezine that contains the article to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=380053
- If you post this article in a website/forum/blog, ALL links MUST be set to hyperlinks and we ask that you send a copy of the URL where the article is posted to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=380053
- We request that you ask permission from the author if you want to publish this article in print.
The role of iSnare.com is only to distribute this article as part of its Article Distribution feature ( http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php ). iSnare.com does NOT own this article, please respect the author's copyright and this publication/reprint terms. If you do not agree to any of these terms, please do not reprint or publish this article.
*****************************
Article Title: What Should Senior Leaders Spend Their Time Doing?
Author: Ryan Scholz
Word Count: 600
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=380053&ca=Leadership
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=380053
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=380053
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
A challenge for small business owners like myself is spending enough time working on the business. Most of our time is spent working in the business. Senior leaders of larger organizations face the same issue. It is very easy to get caught up in the day to day operations of a business at the expense of spending adequate time doing the things that senior executives should be doing.
An activity that I have participants in my executive leadership program do is to keep a log of how they spend their time for five working days. When they analyze where they actually spend their time and compare it to where they feel that they should be spending their time, huge gaps appear in those strategic activities required to improve business performance in the long term.
Strategic activities center on four main areas�vision, values, long term direction, and resource allocation. Senior leaders should be spending a large percentage of their time in these four areas. Much has been written about the importance of vision in determining the long term success of an organization. As Jim Collins and Jerry Portas reported in Built To Last, visionary companies out performed peer companies that lacked a compelling vision. I have found that most companies have created some form of vision statement. However, most think that the job is done when the statement is completed and posted on the wall. The real work of senior leadership is to communicate the vision and to use powers of persuasion to get everyone in the organization committed to achieving the vision. This is a continuous activity that is the responsibility of senior leadership and cannot be delegated to lower level management.
Values are those things which govern personal behavior in an organization. The stronger the values, the less the need for policies and procedures manuals and management intervention into every decision made in the organization. Values are learned by people in the organization by observing the behavior of the senior leaders. For example if they see senior leaders working closely together as a team, employees are more likely to exhibit high levels of teamwork. Likewise, if they see senior leaders openly critical and non supportive of their peers, then there will likely be a �silo mentality� in the organization. The role of senior leadership is to clearly communicate values and to reinforce with their own personal behavior as well as what they do or do not tolerate in the behaviors of others.
Senior leaders are responsible for considering the long term implications of every key decision that they make. It requires the ability to look beyond today, and to have a clear sense of the direction of the organization. A crucial element of establishing the strategy and long term direction of the organization is developing the vital few goals that must be achieved. We call these the critical success factors of the organization. The senior leaders are responsible for defining the critical success factors and constantly monitoring progress towards achieving them.
The resources of the organization are the responsibility of senior leadership to allocate. Resources are financial, human, and physical and are always limited. The role of senior leaders is to apply these resources to the right things that move the organization towards achievement of its goals. Often this requires challenging the status quo with respect to resource allocation.
Examine how you spend your time as a senior leader. Is it focused is these four areas�vision, values, long term direction, and resource allocation?
About The Author: Ryan Scholz works with leaders whose success is dependent on getting commitment and high performance from others. He is author of Turning Potential into Action: Eight Principles for Creating a Highly Engaged Work Place. For more information, visit his web site at http://www.lead-strat-assoc.com.
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=380053
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
- To distribute your articles go to http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php
- For more free-reprint articles go to http://www.isnare.com
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