It’s not what you have, but what you’re able to make out of what you have that matters. Every great leader understands the importance of creating leverage via proper resource allocation. The best leaders possess an innate understanding of how to create resources where none exists – they know how to deploy and redeploy resources to maximize opportunities and to minimize risk. So my question to you is this; are you over-resourced, under-resourced, resource aligned, or do you even know? In today’s post, I’ll look at the topic of resourcing as a key success metric for anyone in a leadership position.
If you think CEO means chief everything officer, your tenure in the C-suite won’t be long. Attempting to do everything yourself is nothing short of a recipe for disaster as a CEO, and in fact, is exactly the opposite of how top-performing CEOs think. Furthermore, the best CEOs consistently spend time contemplating how not to do things themselves. Let me be clear that I’m not advocating an abdication of responsibility, but rather an understanding of the highest and best use of financial, human, and technology resources.
The essence of Leadership is not found in doing things yourself, but in teaching others how to do things better than you ever could. Leadership is about teaching, coaching, developing, and mentoring.
Leadership has nothing to do with hoarding knowledge, but everything to do with distributing knowledge. Without leveraging down it is virtually impossible for a CEO to create any real velocity or momentum in growing the enterprise.
It has been my observation that when deadlines are missed, or important initiatives don’t get off the ground, it is usually an issue of poor resource management. When I hear CEOs say things like “I didn’t have time” or “I didn’t have the necessary resources” I only have one question: Why not? When I hear a CEO complain about a lack of revenue growth while maintaining a small sales force supported by paltry marketing investments, I’m left shaking my head in wonderment at how such a huge blind spot could possibly exist. You see if the project/initiative was worth planning and implementing, it should have been worth resourcing.
As a CEO, if you couldn’t resource the project you either had a flaw in your planning process, you misunderstood or misapplied your talent, or you should have never started the project/initiative, to begin with. The most successful CEOs are like the corporate version of MacGyver in that they can overcome any obstacle with whatever resources they have at their immediate disposal. If you expect miracles from your under-resourced staff you are likely to be disappointed. However, if you expect great things from an appropriately resourced staff, you will be consistently rewarded. If you continually stretch your resource rubber band too tightly, trust me when I tell you that it will eventually snap.
Here’s the big takeaway – As a CEO, your goal is not to see how much you can get out of your people, but rather how much leverage you can create for your people…there is a big difference.
On the flip side of the coin is being over-resourced…overspending is not the same thing as making prudent investments. Just throwing money and resources at a problem is not a solution…it simply constitutes unnecessary margin erosion. Overspending is a tactic for the lazy or the incompetent. The trick is to throw the right talent and the appropriate investment at a challenge in a fashion that creates a certainty of execution while still generating a return on investment.
The bottom line is this – apply your best talent and the lion’s share of your operating capital towards exploiting your greatest opportunities or toward solving your greatest challenges. Everything else is majoring in minors…
