A midsized company's most vexing problem.

• Author: Sher, Robert
• Position: THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

From Mighty Midsized Companies by Robert Sher. copyright [c]2014 by the author. Published by Bibliomotion Inc. (www. bibliomotion.com).

Tolerating dysfunctional leaders is a particularly serious problem for midsized firms. They generally don't have the luxury of a large leadership team to support weak links in the executive chain. The average midsized firm that I work with (from $20 million to $400 million in revenue) has five to 10 people in the C-suite. Compare that with the 41 corporate-level executives at Ford (a $143 billion company) or the 15 at Western Union (at $5 billion, a much smaller company than Ford).

Two or three weak links out of 30? Not a big problem.

Two or three weak links out of six? Big problem.

Having participated in meetings with hundreds of CEOs of midsized businesses in the last five years, I have found their most common complaint is the underperformance of their executive team members. While they tell one...