It’s somewhat common to find upper management lacking fluency, or even basic understanding, of the products made by a company. While there may be reasons for this disconnect, the trade-offs may be costing far more than expected, including a diminished ability to be effective at the helm.

The higher a leader climbs the corporate ladder, the less he/she will know who can be trusted to execute on the mission and who has conflicting interests or a hidden agenda. They will unnecessarily struggle with the complexities of leading their teams by focusing too narrowly on finding these trusted lieutenants. They end up isolating themselves in artificial bubbles, creating a gap between the C-suite and individual contributors so wide that it feels they might as well belong to different species. 

A common fix for the trust problem is to hire people from outside the company, often those with a prior shared history of working together. However, hires don’t necessarily have the know-how in the areas that are needed. They end up being ineffective when participating in conversation, given the lack of domain knowledge. Worse yet, the ripple effect leads to worse team performance and a lesser product than what it could have been. Left unattended, this situation will turn into an opening of the door for the competition to catch up or leapfrog the company.

Priorities

Trusted relationships are one factor in a multi-variable equation. Other variables such as team, products, and customers carry equal, if not greater, weight. Hiring someone you’ve worked with in the past can be the right move, especially when there is a history of successfully building products together. But it raises a red flag when the primary reason for bringing them onboard is “because I trust him/her.”

How much would the executive sacrifice on being effective in exchange for working with a former ally? What guarantees are there this trust translates into results? Or even that this trust is long lasting?

The argument for operating with people you can trust is valid, yet there are other key variables with predictive power for the effectiveness of a team. In the end of the day, the real measure lies in outcomes. Not only the outcome of an isolated event, but reproducible good outcomes over a long period of time, measured by deliverables, customer satisfaction, team longevity, product quality, and other factors.

The teams responsible for building the products are arguably the most crucial factor in that multi-variable equation. When the communication to and from executives and teams suffer, so does the entire company and its customers. Leaders who over-optimize for trust at the expense of outcomes end up failing everyone.

Operations

Whether trust is present or not, there are other better indicators for a leader’s effectiveness:

• Data: It gives you confirmation or refutation of insights. However, it’s a lagging indicator, since it requires time before trends become statistically significant.
• Customer interviews: They will give you validation on whether they want or need to buy what you’re offering.
• Professional experience: Also known as discernment. It comes from your accumulated experience building products.
• Caring: Continuously investing in relationships—both existing and new. Trust emerges naturally when interactions are beyond being purely transactional at work.

These ingredients have better predictive power for outcomes than trust as a standalone metric.

Bridging the gap

The disconnect between upstream managers and the realities of their company can be a costly liability. The emergence of trust should be self-evident from good outcomes achieved, rather than prioritized over effectiveness. Ignore this divide at your own peril.