Leading Above The Line

By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth

I had an email yesterday from a CEO who described himself as “constantly being sucked down into the weeds.” In helping him walk through the logic of why and where to allocate his time, I used the above graphic as a baseline illustration for discussion purposes. This is a visual I developed more than 20 years ago, and the interesting thing is that it’s applicationally as sound today as it was back in 1988. The orange horizontal line that cuts the image in half is what I refer to as the leadership line. When working above the leadership line you are working “on“ the business in a true leadership capacity, and when working below the line you are working “in” the business in more of a management capacity.  While all good leaders spend time on both sides of the line, the most effective leaders spend as much time working above the line as possible.