:Wherever knowledge workers perform well in large organizations, senior executives take time out, on a regular schedule, to sit down with them, sometimes all the way down to the green juniors, and ask:
- “What should we at the head of this organization know about your work?
- What do you want to tell me regarding the organization?
- Where do you see opportunities we do not exploit?
- Where do you see dangers to which we are still blind?
- And, all together, what do you want to know from me about this organization?”
Update: I think it’s important to add one more thing, and I hope it’s not too blunt.
If the employees in an organization don’t feel that they can be honest with those at the top about genuine problems in the organization, then I suggest the organization has the wrong leaders.
I don’t think leaders should be second-guessing themselves all the time. But the truth is that there are some people in leadership, either by accident or who knows what, that simply shouldn’t be there.
One outcome of this exercise may be that the leaders realize they are the wrong people to head the organization. This would be the rare instance (or should be rare!), but if the leaders simply assume they are competent and somehow “appointed” to lead, despite lacking actual competence and having failed to create a work environment that truly builds people up and treats them with respect and unleashes their talents for good and makes them excited about their work and the organization, then the most important thing they might need to think about is whether they are the right leaders at all.