Do You Have a ‘Who’ Problem?

The oth­er day, an over­seas client and I were talk­ing about a prob­lem in the business.

When we start­ed drop­ping down from a CEO lev­el to an exec­u­tive lev­el, to a man­ag­er lev­el, in our think­ing and trou­bleshoot­ing, we had to stop.

I real­ized that we were doing some­one else’s job. Dig­ging in deeply to try to solve oper­a­tional or sys­tems issues isn’t a CEOs job.

So, we didn’t have a ​‘how’ prob­lem. We had a ​‘who’ problem.

The right peo­ple in the right seats

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when we don’t have the peo­ple doing what they’re sup­posed to or don’t have the right peo­ple in key seats, many CEOs and exec­u­tives acquire a part time job tak­ing on some of oth­er people’s responsibilities.

And that’s a problem.

When you do some­one else’s job, you insu­late them from learn­ing expe­ri­ences and stretch­ing their capa­bil­i­ties through the val­ue of fail­ure, and rob them of account­abil­i­ty and poten­tial for their own growth.

I talk about this in Stop Being Chief Prob­lem Solver in chap­ter 12 of Your Oxy­gen Mask First.

Solve the right problem

Back to my con­ver­sa­tion last week. When we real­ized what we were doing, we start­ed a dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion with a dif­fer­ent prob­lem to solve.

Instead of try­ing to solve the issues, we had to find the right who: a very expe­ri­enced exec­u­tive or con­sul­tant who could bring the think­ing of the per­son we did have, to the right level.

CEOs are not mas­ters of every­thing. Our job is to rec­og­nize the prob­lem and find some­one to solve it or help the per­son in the role to thrive. 

The Chal­lenge 

• Think­ing about your world, where might you be unin­ten­tion­al­ly tak­ing on part time jobs, try­ing to help peo­ple on your team to do theirs?
• Where do you need to change your ​“how” ques­tion to a ​“who” question?

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• Are You A Boss or a Parent?
• Prob­lem-Solv­ing Log­ic Can Be Dangerous
• Teach Peo­ple to Think for Themselves

Past Pod­casts

• I’m Wor­ried I’m Micro-Man­ag­ing My Team
• Sev­en Valu­able Way to Devel­op Mid­dle Managers