I think we can all agree that our top executives are very busy. Their days (and often their evenings and weekends) are consumed by meetings, both virtual and in person.
I once asked a division president where he spent his time (because I wanted to make sure my audit plan addressed the areas of concern to him), and he said that he was usually running from one fire to the next. In fact, he said that the hour or so he spent with me on my periodic visits was the only time he was able to sit back and think about the business as a whole! (I always focused on the business, not the auditing technobabble of “risks and controls”).
In my experience and opinion, based on decades of working with top executives around the world supplemented by my own experience as a vice president in IT, effective executives “manage by exception”.
The principle is that you let your direct reports handle the routine and you spend your time elsewhere. I followed that myself[1], describing it as:
- Hire the best people.
- Mentor and guide them as needed, but don’t “manage” them.
- Trust them and get out of their way. (For example, I was very conscious of the fact that I could be a roadblock if I delayed my review and approval of draft audit reports.)
- Check in regularly (usually monthly) to confirm things are on track and ask if they…
