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Leadership Insight: Stump the Dummy

Guest post by: Tim Schneider

Article Overview: A game for the entire organization to play. And many do play it regularly. Stump the Dummy goes something like this: “How are you doing with that Smith file” says a senior level manager to a mid level manager. Or the company president asks a unit executive “where are we at with the remodeling of the meeting rooms?” Or the mayor asks a department head about the pothole on main street.

Leadership Insight: Stump the Dummy

A game for the entire organization to play. And many do play it regularly.

Stump the Dummy goes something like this:

“How are you doing with that Smith file” says a senior level manager to a mid level manager.

Or the company president asks a unit executive “where are we at with the remodeling of the meeting rooms?”

Or the mayor asks a department head about the pothole on main street.

In any of the example above, the rules of the game remain the same. A more senior leader inquires about an operational or tactical level issue within the organization. The issue in question is one that has been delegated or assigned to a subordinate team member because that is where the work should be performed. Rather than focus on more meaningful and strategic issues and updates, the senior leader forces the mid-level manager or supervisor to dig down in the daily operational level.

What is interesting in Stump the Dummy is the motivation of the senior leader to conduct such an interrogation. In some cases, it is because a customer or other stakeholder has raised the issue to the senior leader and instead of referring the inquiring party to the correct source, the senior leader mounts their white horse and rides to the rescue.

Another motivation for a senior leader to get involved in minutiae is sheer boredom and lack of strategic focus. In this case, the senior leader lacks the ability to maintain energies on big picture and long term strategies and out of comfort, jumps into some small scale items.

The final and most devastating motivation for Stump the Dummy involves a lack of faith and trust in those that should be completing the project or task. The senior level leader does not believe the issue will be resolved satisfactorily unless he or she is directly involved and follows up on it diligently. After all, the senior level leader in ultimately the one responsible for the completion and the performance of the organization.

All of this sounds pretty benign so far. In fact Stump the Dummy has been such an engrained part of many organizations that it becomes the norm for leadership behavior and actions. The truth is that Stump the Dummy has some pretty damaging effects and can lead to a great deal of lost productivity and efficiency.

Consider the chained repercussions of the extended playing of Stump the Dummy. In all interactions with senior managers, mid managers and supervisors have to prepare for a huge array of questions about difficult customers, projects and operational issues that may be occurring in their areas. Prior to those meetings, the middle level managers and supervisor will have to seek briefings and reports from their team members. Those team members, you remember, the people that are supposed to be doing the work, then spend hours producing reports and providing updates. The lost productivity is staggering. The lack of leadership is also pretty startling.

In every request for updates, a message of lack of trust can follow. A leader’s job is to insure accountability, not track every step along the way.

If Stump the Dummy is part of your corporate culture, you will want to consider these steps to reduce or eliminate the impact:

1. Get comfortable saying that “you don’t know” the minute by minute update for a difficult customer or small scale project. Indicate that those issues have been delegated to the appropriate people and you know that there is progress being made.

2. Get even more comfortable allowing your subordinate team members provide updates to senior leaders if needed. If an update is needed on the Jones file, let the processor of the Jones file provide the update, not you.

3. Encourage and require your team members to report challenges and successes on assigned tasks and projects. Avoid requiring reports and updates on incremental steps being performed.

4. Provide senior managers with proactive status reports that indicate overall progress and key milestones without the high level of detail that examines individual task steps.

5. Don’t penalize subordinate leaders when they respond with “I don’t know, but will find out for you” type of statements.

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Article Tags: delegation, empowerment, leadership, management, trust



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