2-5-10 The Executive Sleuth

I’ve been reading a fair amount of fiction here lately. Yea, when you are retired, you actually DO have time to read. It’s wonderful. Anyway, I seem to be stuck on murder mysteries lately. But not just any type….. Only the ones where the featured character is an amateur or unwilling or even inept sleuth. Think Janet Evanovich or Susan Wittig Albert.

At the gym today, I was pondering the correlation of the sleuth to the executive. Believe me, at the gym, you can make any kind of connection just to make the time pass more quickly! And I realized that there are a few intersections between what one of the amateur sleuths do in my books with what an executive does in real life.

For example, in the books, the amateur sleuth works very hard to gather what seems to be random bits of information. There are two key elements here…. The amateur sleuth works hard by communicating (1-4-10 Let‘s Talk). More specifically polling her network of informants, listening to what they have to say, and filing the info away for future use. This is what an executive does, both in problem-solving mode and in day-to-day activities.

The second key element is random bits of information. I mean, really, in those books the amateur sleuth is bombarded by seeming random bits of data that she will ultimately use to solve the murder. And while an executive rarely has to solve a murder, he/she is bombarded with random bits of data all day long. The issue for the executive is to synthesize the data such that it is meaningful and useful in the business (1-13-10 Execution Skills -- Now go DO something!)

Another intersection between the amateur sleuth and the executive is less obvious. Oftentimes, in my mystery books, the sleuth will simply blunder into information that she doesn’t want to know (TMI!), or into a situation where she doesn’t want to be, or even blunder into the “aha” moment where she unmasks the killer.

Unfortunately, we executives often blunder into things as well. Despite what some would have you believe, executives aren’t perfect. Just listen to the media! It’s what we do with our blunders that make a difference between a successful executive and one that isn’t. Let’s say you blunder into some adverse information about a co-worker or a customer or a supplier. What do you do about? In my experience, most executives stick their head in the sand and ignore it. Is that the right thing to do? Well, it depends on the information. Some information is best ignored. But other information, that say, impacts your company, must be acted upon. Many execs don’t have the nerve to do this.

A final observation about the sleuth in my books. Since a good, satisfying read is a requirement for these books, the amateur sleuth always pulls together the random data, which leads to the culprit and neatly solves the crime by the end of the book. Unfortunately, for the executive, it isn’t usually that neat. Business is messy. The data doesn’t always lead us the right direction. Our gut instincts sometimes fail us. And at the end of the day, we don’t always solve the mystery or problem. But that’s okay, because real life in business isn’t fiction!

Cheers!