I read over 60 books last year, well, listened mostly, my eyes get tired from all the screen time. The number of books is down a bit from 2019 because I was doing a lot of writing myself.
Audible is my go to resource, although Alexa has a tolerable machine voice now for text-to-speech for kindle books, and is seamless and synced. There are glimmers of Alexa being the “computer” on Star Trek, that oracle of all wisdom. But just glimmers. The other day I asked Alexa how long to Instant Pot some foodstuff, and she actually just told me the answer. Weird that.
I chose No Rules Rules by Reid Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, as my BOTY for 2020. But not for the reasons you might expect, it’s not just a voyeuristic view inside the mouth of FAANG. While, IMO, this is “the” book on ROWE Results Only Work Environments, it’s more just the far end of the “delegation” scale.
We humans like “either/or” a bit too much. We can Micromanage, which is the other far end of the “delegation” scale or we can ROWE together. In practice every CEO operates somewhere on a spectrum between these two. I can make an argument that if one is a micromanager one is really the COO more than the CEO—because CEOs should be spending a fair amount of time on things three years out or more.
It’s the Eisenhower Matrix, a leader should be working on the “most important but not urgent things.” Managers should be working on “urgent and less important things,” Administrators should be working on “not important but urgent things,” and the rest of your team works on the “not that urgent or not that important things.” E.g. Blockbuster, RIP, had really clean VHS tape boxes, delicious smelling popcorn, friendly staff, and a great selection. How’d that turn out?
The thing about Netflix is, it’s difficult to not claim they are the masters of the both the innovation drum AND the execution drum. The way they roll is that each employee has a shocking amount of freedom of which to do their job. But here’s the catch, Netflix can afford to pay top and I mean by far, the best salaries for each position. For this they get the best players for each position on their team. Not many organizations have this kind of competitive advantage, maybe the other FAANGs, and SaaS companies with gigantic profit margins.
Never-the-less No Rules Rules is a roadmap for the pinnacle in delegation. Having said that, it begs our…
Question of the Week…
What stops the typical micromanaging CEO from delegating more, and stressing less?
I propose the short answer is, “Fear of Loss.” Now recently there’s been a little controversy to this next statement but it still appears to be generally accepted that, “most people are motivated more by fear of loss than hope of gain.”
Another good book on this point I read this year was The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova, poker being a metaphor for decision making. She certainly plays the percentages, to take that whole emotional “thing” out of the equation.
The long answer is,
“What are you prepared to invest, how much pain are you willing to endure, in your team’s learning from their own darn mistakes?”
If you are micromanaging, then your team is absolved from all kudos or blame for their decisions, because they aren’t making any decision—you are. If you are looking at an exit in the future, you will get a way less multiple if your team doesn’t know how to run the place without you.
I’ve had CEOs tell me in one breath that their team is awesome and can do anything, and in the next breath tell me that they work way too much, don’t sleep well, and they are still working on day-to-day stuff because they have to. It can’t be both.
Here’s the crescendo.
None of us reading this are Netflix, but let’s see what the first step might look like, what one position could you almost totally delegate to an extreme “A” player, and then let them do what they do, without micromanaging, to take your business to the next level?
If you’d like a thinking partner on anything you read here—just reply !! Cheers ¡¡ Jon