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O P I N I O N
The perils of over-functioning
When executives do too much, they might be avoiding a problem, and they can damage the firm in the process.
A well-meaning executive zooms around the office taking care of everything, and I mean, everything: announcing the new company health plan rather than the finance director who negotiated it; revising a business forecast prepared by the department’s financial analyst; rearranging the marketing boards late at night after that department has gone home; testing the video links for a speech another executive plans to give. Sometimes, they even make coffee.
Julie Benezet
❚ ❚ Letting others off the hook. The over-functioner’s willingness to assume a task assigned to others frees those employees of unpleasant job responsibilities. The finance director might welcome not having to announce new health plan benefits and fielding the ensuing complaints, but it does not advance their career. ❚ ❚ Mediocre work. Taking over the work of oth- ers could result in doing work outside the leader’s expertise. For example, executives often dive into marketing, underestimating the depth of customer analysis required. In fact, marketing is not just pret- ty pictures and the executive meddling could yield a suboptimal result.
Have you met this person? They exist everywhere and at all levels of leadership. While their intentions may be pure, over-functioners create more problems than they solve. Their drive to get things done can eclipse organizational issues and, if not addressed, impair company growth and morale. ORGANIZATIONAL CONSEQUENCES. Below are some of the many possible organizational consequences: ❚ ❚ Avoidance of responsibilities. The over-functioner might invade the turf of others because they don’t like their home turf or want to avoid something. The leader who reorders marketing department photo displays might be seeking a diversion from thinking about whether they have developed a winning pitch.
See JULIE BENEZET, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER September 30, 2019, ISSUE 1314
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