Why Staff Leaders and Line Leaders Have Disconnects

In my work as an executive coach, I regularly work with the executive leaders of “staff” functions such as IT, finance, human resources, legal and the like.  When I interview the colleagues of these clients to learn what others think about what makes them effective and what they could do to be even more effective, I often hear comments about the distinction between staff and line leaders. That distinction is almost always made by the “line” executives. These are the folks responsible for manufacturing, sales and delivery of the product or service to the customer. As most of them would tell you themselves, they’re the people who make the money. 

Here’s the challenge I see for staff leaders. Rightly or wrongly, most line leaders feel like what they do is way more important than what the staff leaders do. As a result, they often don’t have a lot of patience with the different initiatives or requirements promoted by staff leaders. One result is a disconnect between the line and the staff. Lots of time and effort is spent on initiatives that don’t get a lot of traction because the line leaders don’t value them and spend as little time as possible on them. So the result of that for staff leaders is that their roles and internal brand become diminished and they don’t make the contributions they could or should.

One of my mentors, Dave Ulrich, summed up the solution to this dilemma in a simple mathematical statement years ago:

D > d

That means Deliverables are greater than do-ables. That’s an idea that line leaders overlook at their peril. The Deliverables are the big things that have to happen in order to meet the strategic objectives of the organization (e.g. on-time delivery, profitability, new product development, etc.). So, to use an HR example, developing and recruiting the talent to develop new products is a key deliverable. There are lots of things to do (or do-ables) that roll up to delivering top talent to the organization. The disconnect comes when staff leaders don’t position their do-ables in the strategic context of the deliverables. Without linking everything back to the big question, “What are we trying to accomplish and why does it matter?,” all of the initiatives and requirements that staff leaders promote just seem like a long list of “time-sucking things they want me to do now” to most line leaders.

In an upcoming post, I’ll share some of the ways that really effective staff leaders build productive and mutually appreciated relationships with line leaders. In the meantime, what’s your take on the staff leader/line leader disconnect? What are you seeing on that front? What are your theories about root causes? What are your tips for making things better?

Comments

[Jennifer Tucker]

I encounter this often. The degree of power balance (or imbalance) between line and staff managers is one of the first things I look for in doing an organization assessment. Time after time, I have seen that organizations that have figured out how to maintain the power balance between the staff and line groups are also those that have found a sweet spot between cross-department integration and differentiation.

Line managers tend to naturally have more clear cut measures of accountability than staff managers. In systems that balance staff and line well, staff managers also have very clear measures of accountability, which incorporate BOTH overarching organizational goals AND their success in making life easier for the line functions. Yes, overarching corporate goals are important – AND operational efficiencies at the department level are also important. (They should align, you say? Of course. In reality, it is rarely that neat.) Both levels of accountability are vital in making it work… If staff managers are only accountable for corporate level measures, but make line manager’s lives more difficult in the process, it doesn’t work in the long run - line managers start to "in-source" their own finance, communications and IT specialists to maintain control and mitigate perceived risks in local operations. Most line managers have also been BURNED by the latest and greatest from staff managers (CRM, anyone?!?).

Staff managers that are successful – and I have had the pleasure of working with many - tend to work in smaller chunks of effort (quick and steady wins) and are very clear in establishing service level agreements with line managers to set expectations on both sides. They find the common needs across departments and target those first to demonstrate the value of integrated approaches, INSTEAD of starting with the pieces that differ most across departments in the noble (but very difficult) quest for "big win" standardization and efficiency. Once small wins are consistently met, line managers actually start coming to them to staff managers to ASK for their help – always better to be asked to do an initiative you want to do anyway… I’ve seen this work so well that line managers have actually volunteered to centralize functions across departments as long as a certain staff manager is leading it – trust, built through good experience. The BEST staff managers know what they can do effectively, communicate in terms that support the organization AND line needs, AND deliver, each and every time. That's true leadership.

[Gwyn Teatro]

Line vs Staff is an issue that has been raising its ugly head and getting in the way of progress since I can remember..and I have a long memory.
I wrote a post called "the importance of Being Purposeful" which speaks to something of what you are saying. Here's the link if you care to have a look.
http://gwynteatro.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/the-importance-of-being-purposeful/