Every leader has a way to make sure their team is effective, efficient and happy. Recently, a leadership style popularized by Amazon has caught the attention of marketing executive search consultants. It’s called single-threaded leadership.
This concept sprouted as a way to ensure that the most important projects had a strong leader who only focused on that one task. Jeff Bezos wanted to make sure the leader was able to put all of his energy into building, maintaining and expanding this particular project.
In theory, single-threaded leadership sounds great, but does it work? The answer is he can. Amazon is a good example. As a leading executive search company in marketing, MarketPro has taken the method deeper to understand how it can achieve great results.
Single-threaded leadership: Here’s what marketing executive search consultants have learned
Multitasking
The multitasking debate has been going on for many years. Some would say it helps you do a lot more. Others will say the quality of the work and the time it will take to complete it will take longer. Everyone has their point of view.
According to research, multitasking can lead to a reduction in productivity of up to 40%. The rapid change in focus and attention can make it difficult to eliminate distractions and impair your cognitive abilities. Knowing this, Amazon has reduced the need to multitask in their work environment.
In single-threaded leadership, a “ownership†mentality takes center stage, as the executive is genuinely focused on a major initiative. Since the leader will take full responsibility for the effort he put in as well as the result, the temptation to stray from the current project is reduced.
“The best way to fail to invent something is to make it somebody’s part-time job. – Dave Limp, Amazon SVP of Devices.
Dependencies
Over the past year, marketing executive search consultants have seen a lot of change in most businesses. These changes come with several levels of approvals and dependencies on other departments and external resources. For single-threaded leadership to work effectively, choose projects where the leader:
- Has authority and autonomy in decision-making
- Has a minimum of external elements to control
Then remove the remaining barriers and empower these single-threaded leaders to oversee all components of the project to increase the quality of results and eliminate gaps.
Direction
While it is great to give your leader ownership of their project, there is one main factor that makes single-threaded leadership effective. This factor has the LAW leader. When you combine highly skilled, successful marketers with the right leadership, the results are significantly more rewarding.
Finding the right leader, however, is never easy. There are many moving parts that go into the research and maintenance process. How do you assess the cultural fit? Have you considered implementing testing in the interview process? What kinds of skills and experience should the right candidate have?
If you’re a marketing leader, you probably know the kind of executive you need to hire to drive company-wide change. But if you’re a CEO or other senior executive who’s never worked in marketing, it can be quite difficult to really understand what a promising marketing executive needs.
To minimize the risk of hiring a low-quality marketing manager, you need an executive search team with specialized marketing experience and knowledge of the best recruiting strategies. Only then are you in the best position to recruit the right marketing leader for your business.
Conclusion
Not all businesses have the luxury of assigning a member to a task. Budget cuts or the weather can be tough. Despite this, the one thing you should take away from Amazon’s single-wire leadership approach is to make sure you know which projects have the potential to have the greatest impact and have the right leader to lead the business. ‘team.
Here are some of the questions you should be asking yourself as leaders. What vision do I have for the future of the company? Which project is the most important for the organization? Do I have a strong team? Is there a clear leader? What are the responsibilities of each member? Does the leader have control of all the elements necessary to achieve the expected results?
Having the right leader, who has all the resources to take ownership of the project and can control every component of the task, will lead to better results.
