One of the costliest mistakes senior leaders make is spending too much time IN the business instead of ON the business.

When senior leaders focus too much time on the technical and tactical aspects of the business, and playing the role of project managers, they fail to look at the strategic aspects of the business and the longer term plan.

This typically results in ambiguity of roles and responsibilities and a lack of alignment.

Answer the following questions:

• is your product road map shorter than 3-6 months?
• is the strategic planning process hap-hazard and often unintentional instead of planned and consistent each year?
• are performance reviews a once a year thing?
• does your executive team regularly miss their quarterly offsites that should be focused solely on planning and strategic team building?

If you answered yes to any of these issues, it's likely your senior leaders are focused too much IN the business and need to step back to work ON the business.