EXECUTIVE PRIORITIES

Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

An enterprising business owner from Massachusetts called me the other day to express frustration with the volume of work he is doing. Unfortunately, the topic of discussion was not just about the volume of work confronting the owner, it was the increasing volume of non-executive work that he has been asked to complete from his administrative, managerial, and operations employees.

This is a familiar refrain I hear from business owners across the country. Whether it is due to the owners’ inveterate control mindset to not delegate tasks to their managers, the owners’ personal sense of humility to avoid being labeled as an elitist owner unwilling to do the “real work” (performed by the “little people”) that actually keeps the company successful, or the fact that most managers, purposefully delegate tasks upward since they do not want to make a decision of any relative importance out of fear that the decision could result in a negative outcome thereby damaging the manager’s standing in the eyes of the owner.

Regardless of the personal, cultural, or organizational cause of the problem, many owners routinely find themselves: calculating all job estimates (Georgia), interviewing Laborers (Delaware), reviewing timesheets (Illinois), conducting employee terminations (New Jersey), integrating multiple spreadsheets into a single composite payroll report (Maryland), mediating employee disputes (Oregon), examining I-9 Forms (Michigan), tracking employees’ vacation and sick leave balances (Tennessee), drafting employee handbooks (North Carolina), measuring the specific amount of chemicals applied on job sites (California), overseeing snow operations (Minnesota), negotiating pay raises with Foremen (Colorado), evaluating all proposed landscape design renderings (Texas), monitoring employees’ OSHA 10-hour training progress (Virginia), and providing formal signatory payment approval for incidental material purchases (Wisconsin).

Of course, I know all these tasks are important to a company’s success. We all know that!

The real question is, are they best performed by office staff, a manager, field employee, or the owner?

As a capitalist, I agree with you: Owners are ultimately accountable for restraining themselves to not perform lower-level tasks. Which is what I said to the Massachusetts owner as I told him to develop a more prioritized time management system, clarify functional boundaries for himself and his management team, and delegate more responsibilities to his managers than he currently feels is warranted.

To that end, the business owner and I drafted an initial list of executive-level responsibilities that he would perform going forward, holding his subordinates accountable for all other administrative, managerial, or operations tasks. From that point, I then shared that seminal list with multiple business owners across the country for their executive-level input, eventuating in the consensus list shown below.

Only review and approve Landscape Maintenance proposals over $##,###, Landscape Construction work over $##,###, and Enhancements work over $##,###
Meet with prospective clients, community leaders, current VIP clients, key vendors, and business partners (e.g., accountants, insurance agents)
Conduct monthly one-on-one status update meetings with Direct Reports
Be in the yard for departure and arrival at least twice a week
Review all company-wide service contracts (e.g., insurance, vehicles, cell phones, IT) annually, and all open workers’ compensation insurance claims monthly
Attend two networking sessions each month (e.g., Marketing and Sales)
Analyze the YTD, YTY, and YTF Profit & Loss statement with Controller and Field Director to ensure sales and gross margin goals are met monthly
Have lunch with one top-tier client each week
Attend all final interviews for Management staff positions
Review the Company Corporate Calendar across the next 90 days
Make sure the business owner holds him/herself accountable for not performing other tasks