Managing by Exception

I am a huge believer in this approach of managing by exception, where systems should be allowed to run under the assumption that you do not need to track/manage anything unless there are exceptions. For example, as long as a budget is approved at the beginning of the year, do we really need approvals to kick in at every point? As long as the overall billing rate is above average, do we really want to manage/track how resources are being used on projects/investments?

Set up your systems in a way that any exceptions are flagged and corrective actions can be taken immediately, focusing all management bandwidth on solving tough problems and planning for the future, instead of getting mired in the quicksand of collecting and analyzing metrics and approvals at every point, strangulating innovation and ownership from individuals. We spend so much time ensuring everything is alright – why do we need to do that? Can we not let our systems track that? That’s such a manual task – you do not need senior management to figure it out. Let senior management focus on finding solutions once the system has identified a potential problem.