The worst drivers I know are the ones who keep grabbing the steering wheel from the learner. I learnt this lesson years ago while facilitating an executive retreat. During a tea break, a Managing Director pulled me aside and complained bitterly.
“Mr Strategy, my executives are not performing. I follow up every day. I ask for updates every morning. I approve almost every decision myself. Yet things are getting slower.”
Before I could answer, his Head of Operations, who had overheard the conversation, smiled nervously and said: “Sir, with respect, we are not managing the business anymore. We are managing your moods.”
The entire leadership team burst into laughter. The Managing Director did not. Because he knew it was true. And that is argument to leaders: the more a Managing Director tries to control execution personally, the less execution actually happens.
Many organisations suffer from executive congestion. The Managing Director becomes the Chief Approval Officer. Every procurement decision lands on the desk. Every recruitment requires intervention.
Every operational issue climbs to the corner office. The organisation appears busy, but decision velocity collapses. It is like owning a billion-shilling factory and insisting on personally switching on every machine. It is just operationally impossible.
The mathematics of this leadership style is terrible. If a Managing Director makes one hundred operational decisions a week and spends thirty minutes on each matter, that is fifty hours consumed by issues that should have been delegated. Meanwhile, the critical work of leadership, capital allocation, strategy, partnerships, talent development and risk oversight receives the leftovers.
That is expensive clerical work disguised as control. It has nothing to do with leadership.
The irony is amusing. Many executives complain that their teams are weak, while at the same time denying those same teams the authority to make decisions. Then they wonder why nobody takes ownership.
I tell Boards something that often surprises them. Micromanagement is not a sign of strong leadership. It is usually evidence of weak systems. If the Managing Director must personally chase every target, approve every expense, remind every manager and solve every problem, the organisation does not have a leadership problem.
It has a governance problem. The answer is not less, but smarter oversight. This is where great Managing Directors separate themselves from busy executives.
They do not monitor activities, but outcomes. There is a world of difference.
- Poor leaders ask: “How many meetings did you hold?”
- Strong leaders ask: “What changed because of those meetings?”
- Poor leaders ask: “How many clients did you visit?”
- Strong leaders ask: “How much business did we gain?”
Poor leaders count effort. Exceptional leaders count value. This distinction is particularly important in banking and financial institutions where the numbers reveal reality far better than stories.
I advise Managing Directors to obsess over a handful of execution indicators.
First, decision velocity.
- How long does it take to approve a customer facility?
- How long does it take to launch a new product?
- How many decisions are escalated unnecessarily?
- A slow organisation becomes an expensive organisation.
Second, productivity per employee.
- Revenue per employee.
- Profit per employee.
- Customers served per relationship manager.
- Many institutions proudly report staff numbers while ignoring whether those employees are creating value.
Third, cost leakages.
- This is the silent killer.
- Unused subscriptions.
- Poor procurement decisions.
- Idle assets.
- Travel expenses that create no measurable value.
- Fraud losses disguised as operational errors.
I once worked with an institution where employees routinely printed hundreds of pages for meetings, only for participants to spend the entire meeting looking at their phones.
When I asked the Finance Director about printing costs, he laughed. “It is too small to matter.” Six months later we discovered the organisation was losing hundreds of millions annually through dozens of such “small” expenses.
The organisation had a culture problem, not a cost one!
And culture is where execution either accelerates or dies. You cannot monitor execution effectively if people are rewarded for appearances instead of outcomes. I have seen employees remain busy from morning to evening and still create almost no value.
I have also seen quiet, focused teams outperform larger departments because they understand one simple principle: Results matter more than activity. The Managing Director’s responsibility is therefore not to supervise every action.
It is to create the conditions for performance.
- Clear goals.
- Clear accountability.
- Fast feedback.
- Transparent scorecards.
- Consequences for poor performance.
- Recognition for excellence.
That is how high-performing institutions are built. The financial markets understand this very well. Investors rarely ask how many meetings management held.
- They ask about return on equity.
- Cost-to-income ratio.
- Asset quality.
- Deposit growth.
- Capital adequacy.
- Earnings growth.
The market rewards outcomes. Leaders should do the same. And here is the truth I have learned over years as an elite strategist. The Managing Director who constantly interferes with management may appear hardworking. But over time, such leaders create dependent executives, frightened managers and slow organisations.
The Managing Director who builds systems, empowers leaders and relentlessly tracks outcomes creates something far more valuable.
- A self-correcting organisation.
- An organisation that performs even when the boss is travelling.
- An organisation where accountability is embedded in culture.
- An organisation where execution is not dependent on personality.
That is the true test of leadership. Not whether everyone waits for your instructions. But whether the institution performs brilliantly without needing them. That is why I tell Managing Directors this at every Board retreat.
Do not become the hardest working employee in your organisation. Become the architect of a system where performance becomes inevitable. Because great leaders do not control everything. They create the conditions where excellence becomes normal.
Do you want to empower your teams to win? Claim this 30 slide PPT for internal leadership training. Click here, https://app.twezimbe.com/g/enWb-f7l, create an account and request a copy for the editable PPT.
A conversation every board and EXCO should have
What would 10X your profits in the next 10 years mean to your organisation? What would it mean to your shareholders if earnings multiplied tenfold, not through luck, but through deliberate strategy and relentless execution? What would it mean to your board if strategy discussions shifted from explaining missed targets to celebrating market leadership?
And what would it mean to your people if they worked in a culture where accountability is embraced, decisions are faster, innovation thrives, and everyone understands how their work contributes to winning?
Most organisations will never find out because execution remains their greatest hidden risk.
Mr Strategy believes that the future belongs to organisations that execute faster, align better, and build cultures where strategy comes alive every day. If your organisation is pursuing a bold growth agenda, preparing for a strategic reset, seeking a high-performance culture, or aligning itself to Uganda’s and Africa’s next growth wave, now is the time to act.
Invite Mr Strategy to speak at your Board Retreat, Executive Retreat, Annual Leadership Conference, or Strategy Session. Or engage Summit Consulting Ltd as your trusted Strategy Execution Partner to help you:
- Transform strategy into measurable results.
- Build a culture of ownership and accountability.
- Strengthen governance and leadership effectiveness.
- Embed execution discipline through the ACTWIN™ methodology.
- Deploy real-time performance visibility using melaGRC™.
Because the next decade will reward organisations which execute brilliantly.
The real question is: Is your organisation ready to execute at the level required to achieve it? I remain, Mr Strategy, Execution is the Strategy of Summit Consulting Ltd where we turn ideas into measurable results.
