Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Christopher J. Williams, chairman and chief executive of the Williams Capital Group. He says that if managers are bombarded with phone calls and email during their vacations, they should do a better job of developing their teams.

To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

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Bryant: You started out as an architect. Tell me about that experience.

Williams: I worked in an architectural firm in New Haven for about two and a half years. The lessons I learned working there far exceeded anything I could have learned in business school from an entrepreneurship perspective.

The owners not only focused on the current projects, but also constantly looked ahead for other opportunities. I learned about the relentless pursuit of business from them. They were very focused. When we got a little too rambunctious on the floor where all the draftsmen were, they’d say, calm down, let’s keep going.

Bryant: What were some other early management lessons for you?

Williams: Like many people who move from doing to managing, I probably stayed more involved at a granular level than what’s optimal. When you do that, you spend less time managing. Whenever you don’t know what to do, you revert back to what you know, which is, “Let me do it because I can get this done.” The challenge that created was that I wouldn’t necessarily develop people as quickly as I probably should have, because I would often say it’s easier for me to do it, and then they’d watch. But that’s not the same as giving someone the guidelines and saying, “You do it,” and though it may not be exactly the way I would have done it, I can give guidance.

I probably did not do that as well as I could have early on. If you develop people, it means fewer phone calls and fewer interruptions when you’re on vacation. If you haven’t developed them, then you’re tethered to the organization. Some people love to know they’re needed constantly, and that people have to call them. Unfortunately it’s common, but it’s not the best for the organization. I found that when I’m on vacation and getting calls and constant e-mails, then I must not be doing as good a job as I should to make sure that the group can perform without me.

Bryant: What kind of culture did you want when you started your own firm?

Williams: I wanted this company to be operated in a way that doesn’t have the faults or shortcomings that people might have seen at their prior employer. Any large organization has certain issues. I wanted to make sure that we’d do whatever we could to mitigate those. The biggest issues are people not necessarily being valued for their performance and instead being caught up in the bureaucratic hierarchy, where they were either going to survive or thrive or do poorly because of the area they worked in, or their careers could be enhanced or held back by their relationships or lack of relationships.

I want this to be a complete meritocracy. That’s something you have to make sure you constantly let people know. You’ve got to judge people on their merits. You have a variety of personalities, and it never fails that anyone, including me, might prefer to spend time with one person instead of another. But if people are professional, productive and an asset to the firm, my personal preferences shouldn’t have anything to do with it. I try to make sure I emphasize that regularly.

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Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times‘ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.