Executives are exception handlers.”
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“In a recent Reboot podcast, Jerry Colonna shared that he thinks the CEO’s job is to build the machine that builds the products and services, not to build the products and services. The implication of that for me is that executives should not be involved in the day-to-day operations of a company, so they can focus on building and optimizing the machine/company. ”
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“Another way to think about it is that if a responsibility can be turned into a function with defined inputs and outputs (I would describe this as an API to my engineering clients), it should be delegated to somebody else at the company. ”
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“So what does that leave for the executive to do? Exception handling. Things will come up where the “machine” doesn’t have a defined script, and the system throws an exception. This could be because it requires a tradeoff between two company priorities or values, or because it involves an issue between people, or because a surge overwhelms the capacity of the current system. The executive’s job is to step in, handle the exception, and build new machine capabilities to handle that situation the next time.”
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“When I hear about an executive client continuing to step in and handle the same exception repeatedly, I joke that it’s time to file a “bug report” on the executive so they can figure out how to systematize the company’s response to handle it without them. ”
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“Executives sometimes worry that exception handling isn’t a big enough job for them, and they will not be respected if they aren’t doing “real” work. But in a startup or any group that is growing quickly, there will always be exceptions to handle. And if an executive loads themselves down with too many day-to-day responsibilities, they won’t have the capacity to handle the exceptions, and the company will suffer. ”
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“I’m curious if this model makes sense to others. How might you apply it to situations you’ve seen? ”
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“#leadership #executive #coaching #exceptionhandling #delegationAPI