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Key Takeaways

Organizational layers soften reality, so executives end up managing reports instead of the business.

Frontline employees spot friction long before it shows up in dashboards or formal meetings.

Regular, unstaged time on the floor plus visible follow-through builds both better decisions and trust.

One of the biggest risks executives face is becoming too disconnected from the reality of their own business. It becomes easy to experience the company through dashboards, presentations and filtered conversations instead of direct observation. Information gets summarized, simplified and cleaned up before it reaches the executive floor. Over time, leaders can start managing reports about the business instead of the business itself. That disconnect creates dangerous blind spots .

I learned early in my career that conference-room reality and frontline reality are often very different.…