The Management Value Add

How much do your managers add value as managers and how much do they try to add value by doing work that others should be doing?

Recently this question was asked unrhetorically in a customer organisation and the answers were very revealing:

• Many managers were spending between 20% and 30% of their time checking, chasing, covering or actually doing the work of team members.
  
• Fewer than 5% were spending less than 5% doing what they shouldn’t be doing.

Guess who were the most productive, with the highest team satisfaction ratings? The managers who were doing just that - managing by adding value through coaching, team building, creating, performance managing, recruiting, resource planning etc, etc. Not manically chasing the job by doing the work of others.