70% of all strategic initiatives fail to meet their objectives. The most important reason is a lack of execution power. In my work with high performance organizations, I have found that execution power especially collapses when leaders have to spend a lot of their time on executive babysitting. The executive babysitter frequently has to play three roles:
- The Referee. Instead of solving issues between themselves, direct reports engage the leader to solve these conflicts for them.
- The Taskmaster. This includes chasing other people’s deadlines, KPI’s, plans, reports, tasks, etc.
- The Monkey Magnet. Instead of solving problems (“monkeys”), direct reports bring their problems to the leader to solve. As a result, the monkeys end up on the shoulder of the boss.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time on playing the referee, taskmaster, and monkey magnet, what are your own behaviors which enable others to use you as an executive babysitter?
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