It’s no different for a business leader. Only a leader can ask the tough questions that everyone needs to answer, then manage the process of debating the information and making the right trade-offs. And only the leader who’s intimately engaged in the business can know enough to have the comprehensive view and ask the tough incisive questions.

Only the leader can set the tone of the dialogue in the organization. Dialogue is the core of culture and the basic unit of work. How people talk to each other absolutely determines how well the organization will function. Is the dialogue stilted, politicized, fragmented, and buttcovering? Or is it candid and reality-based, raising the right questions, debating them, and finding realistic solutions? If it’s the former—as it is in all too many companies—
reality will never come to the surface. If it is to be the latter, the leader has to be on the playing field with his management team, practicing it consistently and forcefully. Specifically, the leader has to run the three core processes and has to run them with intensity and rigor.

LARRY: When I appoint a new business manager, I call her into the office to discuss three issues. First, she is to behave with the highest integrity. This is an issue where there are no second chances—breach the rule, and you’re out. Second, she must know that the customer comes first. And finally I say, “You’ve got to understand the three processes, for people, strategy, and operations, and you’ve got to manage these three processes. The more intensity and focus you put on them, the better you make this
place. If you don’t understand that, you’ve got no chance of succeeding here.”

Companies that do these processes in depth fare dramatically better than those that just think they do. If your company doesn’t do them in depth, you aren’t getting what you deserve out of them. You put in a lot of time and effort and don’t get useful output.

Taken from: Execution The discipline of Getting things Done