To Mike Crowther, leading
means staying connected to your people, communicating, collaborating and strategizing.
In contrast, managing means
focusing more on processes,
the nuts and bolts of what
makes an organization run.
There is certainly a time and a
place for managers to manage,
but if you concentrate too
much on managing and not on
leading, Crowther says you’re
probably robbing yourself of
time to focus on your people.
“If you operate at an appropriate level for a leader, it’s
fairly easy because the type of
connection that is involved in
sharing strategies, collaboration, which is not quite as
overwhelming from a time
management standpoint as
trying to operate as a manager,” says the president and
CEO of the $23 million
Indianapolis Zoo.
Smart Business spoke with
Crowther about the differences
between leading and managing
and why the best CEOs are
big-picture thinkers who don’t
let opportunities for communication and collaboration get
clouded by processes and
policies.
Keep communication active. The
most important thing is to not
let communication turn into a
policy but instead keep it as an
active process. There are different methods of communication
that are needed for different
times of the year, different times
in the life cycle of an organization, different audiences.
The worst thing to do is say,
‘These are our communication
policies; this is what everybody
will do,’ because everything
becomes rote and it isn’t really
communication. At that point,
it’s simply going through a
process.
We do regular all-staff meetings where everyone on the staff
gets together, and we provide
information and update everybody. We do send out e-mail
communication on things that
are relevant, but I think the most
important thing for me to do is
understand and trust the people
who have the job of communicating to their own staff.
I have five direct reports, and
we have had no turnover in
those positions in the six years
I’ve been at the Indianapolis
Zoo. Because we have had no
turnover in those positions, they
know me and I know them. I
can rely on them to guide me as
to what I should be doing.
I get great guidance from the
people who are responsible for
the divisions of the company.
Every week, I go out to lunch
with all of our executive staff.
We go somewhere in town and
sit down, and we might not talk
about anything that has to do
with business.
We might talk about a specific
project or multiple issues related
to the industry, or we might just
talk about the Indianapolis Colts.
But we have that kind of off-site
regular meeting each week with
the executive leadership.
You need to have that connection, even if you’re not talking
shop, because dealing with
human beings requires you to
behave like a human being. The
person you see out doing their
job hopefully woke up in a bed
that morning and was thinking
about their personal situation,
how their kids and spouse are
doing, whether they need to
change the oil in the lawn
mower, those kinds of things.
Those are human beings; they
are not machines doing jobs. If I
want somebody doing a job efficiently, the first thing I have to
do is recognize that it is not a
machine, that it’s a human
being, so how will a human
being react to performing a certain task? I don’t know until I
know the details of that person.
While it is not my job to go around and watch them do the
job, my job is to let them know
it is another human being that is
providing some of the strategy
and direction for the institution
and making the policies that
impact them directly.