Thinking Vs. Doing: The Owner’s Dilemma

As the leader of your organization, what is your job?  Where can you spend your time – energy – resources to maximize the value of your company.  Challenge yourself to see your role as the CEO as one that you want to divide into two buckets: one for managing and the other for thinking.

The managing bucket is where, metaphorically speaking, you ensure the trains all run on time. You are the conductor of the organization and In this role, you’re establishing goals for your employees and holding them accountable for achieving their targets. You’re making sure your products and services are of high quality and that your biggest customers are happy.

When you wear your manager hat, you are analyzing your company looking for small enhancements every day. This obsession with continuous improvement is what big companies call “six-sigma thinking,” but you probably just think of it as building a great company.

Now the other bucket is reserved for thinking and that is where you create the future of your company. It is during this visionary time, you get to design new products, imagine new ways of serving customers, or contemplate where you could take your business in the years ahead.  You are working on the direction of your business.  You have risen out of the weeds and working at the 70,000-foot level.

Your visionary hours are spent dreaming and imagining what your business could be, instead of worrying about what it is today.

The question is, how much of your time should you devote to each role? If your goal is to create a more valuable business—one that someone might like to buy one day—your business is best served by taking you out of the dependency role and increasing the time you spend on thinking – working on the business and developing the next level of staff to do more of the managing – the day to day running of the business.  Making yourself replaceable as the doer of the business.

In short, the owners of the most valuable businesses have found managers to ensure the trains run on time while they spend an increasing amount of their energy thinking about what’s next for their business.

Let Catalyst Group ECR work with you to develop the processes to balance your time – to regularly work on your business and continue to grow its value.