Verne Harnish, CEO of Gazelles Growth Institute, reminded attendees at a conference I recently attended that, “the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle.” In other words, company leadership is often the reason progress does not occur. Harnish said that leaders need to let go of some things if they want to be able to grow their business.
“Determine your strengths and weaknesses. Ask yourself what gives you energy and excitement? Figure out which parts of your job wear you out and find someone else to do them,” he said.
He also suggested that you do the same thing for your employees. “Ask people what they love and what they loathe. You will likely find that 25% of the stuff people are doing, no one needs to do.” And more than likely, these are also the things people don't like to do.
One area where Harnish said managers add to the bottleneck is in hiring people “who are just like us.” He contended that is not a good strategy and added, “You want the strangest workforce you can find.” Businesses need a mix of people with different ways of thinking and different strengths and weaknesses.
Harnish reminded the audience that the goal is not about working people harder, but rather engaging everyone’s creativity in figuring out how to improve and grow the company.
“Your job as a leader is energy management,” Harnish said. “It is all about making it easy for your employees to do their job.”
When you do this you will also be making it easy for your customers to do business with you. That should be the goal of every business leader.
