Assessing with precision
When you cannot see the wood for the trees it can be very difficult to know what you need to work on as a senior leader.
If your inbox is bursting at the seams, your hours growing longer by the week and the demands are ever-increasing it is not easy to step back and assess your own bigger picture.
Doing so effectively requires some form of structure, and for very busy senior leaders it needs not to take a lot of time.
It also needs a precise set of results you can start to work with straight away.
With that in mind I put something together - a five minute assessment tool.
This blog covers five of the key lessons I have learned, and been reminded of, from putting this together.
1. Workload is not a constant
An individual’s overall workload is affected by many factors, such as their position in the organisation, number of direct reports, the stakeholders they engage with and so on.
It is also affected by the hundreds of micro-decisions that senior leaders make. By that I do not mean big decisions about hiring or allocating resources.
I am referring to the micro-decisions about whether a senior leader chooses to engage with a task or not and for how long. These are often based on some core principles about how they work, some of which they are not always aware of or realise they represent a set of choices.
Between them they can make the difference between a 40 hour working week and one that is 60 plus and growing quickly.
2. Well-being is an outcome
Someone said to me recently that they assumed my work was all about reducing workload and increasing both work-life balance, potentially a series of ‘hacks’ as it were.
That is definitely part of it but I don’t call myself the ‘well-being guy’.
This is because I primarily see well-being as an outcome rather than a starting point.
A leader who delegates well, manages upwards effectively and is confident enough to raise the difficult issue is also one that finds it easier to make time for family, friends, exercise and personal interests.
And as indicated above, too often we can fixate on quantity and how hard someone works, rather than their overall level of effectiveness.
3. Results may vary
The results so far have been interesting!
How people feel about various aspects of their senior leader lives really varies.
One person feels they can manage up really well, but their workload remains a real problem. Elsewhere the opposite is true.
Another says they have a handle on all their responsibilities, but only at serious cost to their well-being. This makes me wonder what kind of handle they really need to have if that's the consequence.
Then another has their workload and well-being in a good place but not the extent to which they manage their tasks and people. Maybe that's not a bad place to be!
4. Managing upwards is key
Too many people work on the basis that they have no say in what they do and often how they do it. Going to their line manager or the boss to ask for something can be incredibly stressful for far too many.
That includes senior leaders and it can also include the boss who would rather get on with it than go to the board and ask. This is despite the fact that this is part of their responsibilities.
Although there are some outliers, the indication so far is that an individual’s propensity to manage upwards has a very significant impact on their overall workload.
I know from my coaching work that this is a really key issue and the source of a lot of thoughts in the middle of the night. It can be resolved.
5. The key area of responsibility which falls off the end
It is amazing how many people have one of these.
The ‘thing you are responsible for’ which exists on paper only. Sometimes there’s more than one.
And sometimes it doesn’t matter. The person in charge of it does a fine job and does not really need your support. This may be just as well, but when you are frantically trying to get everything done it can be quite a bonus.
The issue is when it is a key responsibility and it is not going so well, or when it is indicative of a wider problem of how you manage in general.
Remember that:
There are many routes to success, but whatever your route there is always something to improve.
Furthermore it might be an area which works well enough for now, but could leave you exposed when working at a higher level.
If you have got to the end of this and not given it a go I will leave the link here as well. I am grateful for all feedback as to how you found it!
What are your results?
