The Idea in Brief
It’s no secret that companies must be agile and responsive to succeed in rapidly changing markets. What has been overlooked is the importance of frontline managers—shop-floor supervisors, leaders of R&D or sales teams, and the like—in creating such organizations.
CEOs and other executives should directly interact with small groups of frontline managers on a systematic basis. These conversations provide executives with timely, unfiltered information about what’s going on in the business and help them spot opportunities and problems much more quickly.
Personal exchanges will also give executives an opportunity to explain the strategy to frontline managers and get them to own it. This is a big deal: When the people directly responsible for managing the vast majority of a company’s employees are engaged and energized, the result is a charged-up and aligned organization.
The managers most responsible for a company’s success or failure happen to be the ones with whom the CEO spends the least amount of time. The people I’m talking about are frontline managers—shop-floor supervisors, leaders of R&D or sales teams, managers in restaurant chains or call centers. They’re at the very first level of management across a company’s business operations and functions. Depending on its size, a company might have anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 such managers. Typically, they make up 50% to 60% of a company’s management ranks and directly supervise as much as 80% of the workforce.
