CEO ‘office hours’: The best idea we’ve heard this month

Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lyne has “office hours,” during which any employee at the luxury-brands maker can get on her calendar for a half-hour, according to an interview in The New York Times. Lyne gives over a couple hours a week to office hours, and she reports, “it’s turned out to be a fantastic way to find out what’s bubbling under the surface.”

The half-hour seems about right to me, and the only conceivable objection—I’m going to be besieged by crackpots with nutty ideas or malcontents with chronic complaints—melts away when you think of the career-gripping courage it would take for most people to make such an appointment.

I think every CEO ought to have office hours—and that’s not something I say about many ideas that come along. The question is, why in hell don’t they already?