The first big assignment for Tony LaRussa, the newly appointed chief baseball officer for the National League Arizona Diamondbacks, was to visit South Bend, Indiana; Visalia, California; Mobile, Alabama and Reno, Nevada. These cities are the locations of the club’s minor league affiliates, and showcase the high potentials for promotion to the big leagues.
By visiting the clubs, LaRussa gets baseline knowledge without embellishment or withholding of negative news. This brutal honesty reaches him firsthand without the skewing that can come from the flow of information upward. Often this upward flow is shaped the way subordinates perceive that executives want to receive it. Sometimes it means skimming off the bad news and emphasizing the good. An executive can think that things are going great when the opposite is the case.
Executives who make trips to the front lines can see first hand how things are going without filters and can engage staff to problem solve with facts instead of supposition.
“Tony LaRusso on Leadership: Hit the Road First”
JUN
About the Author:
Deborah Brown (Debbie) founded Atlanta based D&B Consulting, Inc. in 1993 to provide executive career and leadership coaching, and executive career transitions and outplacement services to organizations and individuals. She is a Master Practitioner of the MBTI personality assessment and a Certified Social + Emotional Intelligence Coach® through the Institute of Social + Emotional Intelligence® of Denver, Colorado. Debbie earned the SPHR (Senior Professional in Human Resources) certification.