Every CEO needs to know how to strike a balance between staying aloof from the nitty-gritty of his company's operations and getting too involved in the day-to-day details of those employees and divisions far from the corner office.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that the CEO can do no wrong: If he decides to poke his nose into the mailroom, the information technology division, the assembly line, it must be good. Why? Because pro-active is good, management by walking around is good, hands-on is good.
Well, I'm not so sure. An example of how a hands-on CEO -- or even just the hint of one -- can backfire comes from the recent contretemps with Walt Disney Company's chief Michael Eisner. All Eisner did was go on record in an interview about the company's struggling television network, ABC, whose ratings have plummeted. "If I spent a couple of hours a day there," he reportedly said, "I could make it No. 1 in two years."
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