Case Study: Ben The Bottleneck Leader

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Ben is a busy leader who manages 10 staff members. His staff are each assigned responsibility for managing 1 client, but Ben finds himself often handling ALL the clients. His workload piles up, while the people he manages are confused, not sure what to do, twiddling their thumbs without any work.?

To make matters worse, all the clients have learned to come to Ben, not the staff who are supposed to be managing the clients.

Why might this be happening?

1. Ben might lack confidence or trust in his team?
2. Ben might be a people pleaser?or a perfectionist
3. The company is lacking a system, or not using their system. Ben HAS BECOME the system.

What problems can this cause in Ben's organization?

1. Ben’s mental health might start to decline, leading to burnout?
2. A lack of trust in his team’s quality of work will negatively impact the confidence of the people he leads. They might feel like they’re incompetent and have no responsibility, making them care less about their job.

What can Ben do?

Ben needs to reevaluate the system that his organization has in place. What steps are the process are not going well? What could he change?

One example of a change he could make: Make it easier for his staff and his clients to communicate with each other, instead of BEING the communicator.

For example: when he gets an email from a client, instead of responding to it himself, he could forward it to the staff member responsible for the client.

Listen to the full solution to Ben's dilemma in this week's podcast:

Expert Insight: "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets."

- Dr. W. Edwards Deming,1 American business theorist and economist

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