December 24, 2014: Your Executive and You

It's Christmas Eve!  Just to be contrary, I took yesterday off from the blog and instead will cover a somewhat esoteric topic, I think: the work life of an executive.

The news (and office scuttlebutt) often make the work life of an executive sound easy and fun: you travel, meet people, get paid well, and sometimes the company will even pay you when they fire you.  The reality is different.

Yes, you travel (you miss your kids' soccer games).  Yes, you meet people (and if they are customers and don't like you, it could sink your business).  Yes, you get paid well.  No different reality for that one, that part is true.  Most executives don't get golden parachutes.  They are often given the chance to resign instead of be fired.  Executives are married to the company.  They have 16,000 things (my favorite number to convey limitlessness) going on at the same time.  People call them at all hours of the day and night, and they have to be available for emergency phone conferences 24/7.  Romantic dinner with your spouse?  Customer emergency in Singapore!  Saturday morning soccer game with your buddies?  HR needs you in a disciplinary action meeting! Leave your cell phone at home when you go on vacation?  I don't think so!

The reality of an executive's work life is that she has a huge set of responsibilities, and there is no possible way she will know every thing going on in her operation.  The VP has meetings all day long - budget strategy sessions, revenue opportunity meetings, IT project updates, customer escalations, personnel disciplinary meetings, operation status updates, training planning, you name it, it's part of the executive's portfolio of responsibilities.  Most of the day is spent going from meeting to meeting and making decisions based on snippets of data.

Even though you and your team spend all day every day on a certain project, the exec doesn't have an hour to hear all of the important things you're doing.  She has 10 other people with projects to talk about today.  Yours is probably not the most important one.  But the exec will try to make you feel like it is.  That is also part of the job description.

Given this reality, executives have fundamental bandwidth issues.  They gather a trusted cadre of lieutenants who receive, filter, and pass along important information.  These lieutenants know what words like "risky" and "potential" and "troublesome" mean to the executive.  Some are more risk-averse than others.  Each has his own areas of expertise and areas of ignorance.  Some will admit ignorance, some will fake competence or deny ignorance.  They must trust the team to give them good information.

When the exec goes out into the company to speak with the likes of you, she may not realize that you don't know what "risky" means to her.  If you use that word casually because it's not a hot-button for you but it is to her, you may get a sudden case of executive attention.

Or if the executive is in a project status update meeting and sees something she doesn't understand (why would the Toledo office be so far behind in training?), she may ask a question to the presenter.  Because the exec knows she doesn't know everything that's going on, a random audit is a simple way to keep people on their toes.  She'll ask a question.  It could be anywhere, about anything.  Sometimes she's only curious.  Sometimes she's concerned.  Her close circle will be able to tell which it is.  The purpose is just to keep everyone on their toes and prepared for such questions.

If such a question comes down to you, your best bet to answer it is usually not to give the executive a call.  Your best bet is usually to call one of the exec's close circle, ask some questions to clarify what the concern is.  The Toledo office is behind in training.  Is the executive concerned that the management team is not leading that effort?  Concerned that the training quality is perceived so low that the team doesn't prioritize it?  That the IT system that delivers the training has been unreliable lately, and maybe the team can't get the training?  You know the answer, of course.  But you don't know the question.  So you call the person who does have 30 minutes to talk to you about a specific issue, understand why you are being asked the question, and then you can prepare a reply.

The most important thing to realize about your executive team is this: they are all humans.  They all have 24 hours in a day.  They are usually pretty smart.  And they are fallible.  And ignorant about large swaths of your company's detailed operations.  So when you interact with them, prepare yourself to speak in a condensed form, get right to the point, ask for any help you need, and let them go!  Hopefully they have other issues that are more pressing than yours, and you can get their help to get your job done.