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 objectionโ€”I’m going to be besieged by crackpots with nutty ideas or malcontents with chronic complaintsโ€”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 hoursโ€”and that’s not something I say about many ideas that come along. The question is, why in hell don’t they already?

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