Managing to get your hands dirty

March 20, 2024

I had a great time down at the Florida Trucking Show in February, but I had two very different experiences at the same time—one because of a conversation, and the other from something I saw out in the harbor. First, the conversation.

I had a chance encounter with someone who told me about a recent change at his company (they were in truck maintenance). His company had recently changed its name and, as a sales guy, he was having difficulty explaining to potential customers what it is his company did because the name no longer matched what they offered (they were now vaguely branded as offering ‘solutions’ of some sort). What he was telling me was that this higher-up decision didn’t match the needs and expectations on the ground. There may have been genuinely good reasons for making the switch, but something got missed when it came to aligning the high-level stuff with some customer-level realities.

So what was the other experience?

Accessible leaders

Out in the harbor near the convention center were some mega-yachts (some of which, I learned after some internet sleuthing, cost over $100 million), and one evening I watched the crew of one of them get ready for what looked like a special event on board. Was it a wedding reception? Engagement party? Birthday? Who knows, but whatever it was, they were pulling out all the stops—champagne, floral accents, everything placed just so.

As the crew worked to get everything ready though, I was struck by one of the event staff—from the way she was dressed, I would say she was the head event planner, or someone close to it. Despite her position though, I watched her walk over to one of the tables and, with a dustpan and brush in hand, get down on her hands and knees and clean up something on the ground. There was this decision-maker (employed by an obviously high-value client), and she didn’t even hesitate to get her hands dirty in order to make sure things were going exactly as they should.

Finding the balance

Clearly there’s a version of that yacht experience that could go wrong—chasing after your people, cleaning up every little spill because you don’t have faith in them to do it right themselves—paying attention can very easily sneak into micro-management. That wasn’t what was happening in this case, but you can see how it could happen. So what’s the balance? The right kind of leadership will be attentive to both areas (the high- level and the on-the-ground), and there are a few strategies that can help keep you there. Consider these three:

1. Zoom out, then zoom in
   No one said running a business was easy, but running a business well is even harder. Being able to see the big picture is crucial for guiding the business, but you’ll need information to make those big decisions. This was one of the (many) brilliant insights in Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice: zooming out gives you the analysis, but zooming in gives you the data. Make time to look closely at what’s happening in the finer details, but make sure you’re doing that as a learning opportunity rather than just trying to verify what you think you already know.
2. Meticulous doesn’t equal micro-managing
   If you’re always there watching your people because you don’t trust them to make decisions, they’ll never learn to develop better judgment and you’ll never get any sleep. But that doesn’t mean you should just let them rip. Good leadership means paying attention to the details, being meticulous about what you’re delivering, and following up.
3. Be quick, not hasty
   Sometimes you need to pivot what you’re doing quickly or you’ll miss or an opportunity (or fail to avoid a danger). But that’s not the same as hastily making a change that you think will get the job done. Even in the face of pressing, time- sensitive challenges, don’t forget to check your data (including the intel you get from your own people closest to the ground) so that your next move is deft, not damaging.

To be clear, a lot of what we found at the show was closer to the yacht experience than the conversation I had with the sales guy. As my colleague and I walked around and talked with different companies who had displays at the show, we noticed how many company presidents were there. Keep in mind, this is not a high-level management conference—this is an open-to-the-public trucking show—but these leaders were there making sure they understood what was happening at a granular level.

The point here isn’t about leaders going to shows or not going to shows (or cleaning up spills!)—it’s about a sense of perspective on where the business is actually functioning and where it needs attention. It’s easy to get lost in the higher-level stuff, but it’s also deadly. But smart leaders aren’t afraid to get down on the ground and see what’s going on—even if it means getting their hands dirty.