The Concertina Effect
Every senior leader has been there.
It starts as a pile.
The pile might be a physical one with unread papers and other documentation. It may also be electronic in the form of the uncontrollable, untameable inbox, filling back up as soon as you leave your desk.
It may also be in other electronic forms, MS Teams messages, WhatsApps chats or the webinar you promised you would watch. Worse still, the meetings you couldn’t attend but someone ‘helpful’ sent you the video.
But that’s just ‘the pile’. And ‘the pile’ is not on your job description, despite how much time and energy it absorbs.
Your role is described in broad, strategic terms. Key initiatives, significant areas of responsibility and big projects. There they sit, looking as bold and shiny as they ever did.
That is because they are untouched from your original good intention. As one milestone after another passes, without anything of note happening, the concertina effect kicks in.
The pile grows,the concertina squeezes together and the feeling of being completely overwhelmed grows as the days go by.
It is a potent combination, and you are in the middle of it.
How to avoid the concertina effect?
Here’s four ‘how tos’ to consider.
1.Middle leadership success is not enough
Let’s start with a brutal fact.
If you have recently started life as a senior leader having been promoted from your middle leader role, you need to accept you are doing a very different job now. Think ‘opposite’ rather than ‘extension’.
Reacting to what comes to you (‘at’ you even), at middle leader level is a key part of the work. If all those requests from senior leaders are answered you’ve done well, even if you are not convinced they are actually talking to each other. If everyone in your section feels both cared for and held to account you are doing even better.
These skills are handy at senior leadership level no doubt. But senior leadership is not an accelerated version of middle leadership. If you treat it that way, expect to struggle. Those significant areas of responsibility require considerable planning and forethought, plus lots of relationship building with stakeholders.
If you want your days to be filled with inbox clearing and reading the documents your peers turned down, knock yourself out. The faster you respond to an email, the quicker the next will arrive. Leave it for a while and often people will sort out their own problems.
Your challenges require a different dynamic, one that requires chunks of time to generate decent answers which might survive contact with a staff meeting. Slow down to give yourself the best chance of making genuine progress.
2.Accept resource constraints
I will give you a clue. You are not going to get the resources you think you really need.
There is no point waiting to start because you sent an email to the boss asking for a couple of people to be freed up from the project they told you they were desperate to dump. Similarly, the money from the pot which is allegedly unspent is not coming your way. Whatever is ‘left over’ in any spending pot is often a myth. It’s earmarked for something else, and it is not you.
In fact, you should operate as though you do not even have what has been made available to you. A leader’s life is unpredictable. The person you were relying on might leave. You might be ill. The government, council or board of directors might change and then the priorities change again (but yours now needs to be done sooner).
If you seek to work within your parameters, and not at their edge, you will start to ask better questions and consequently make better decisions. If you do get what was promised, it is a bonus which can accelerate or enhance the project, but you should not be depending on it to have any chance of success at all.
Consider how you can demonstrate how progress is being made on the project after a relatively short period of time. Once you have momentum it is amazing how others will seek to help you so they can claim their own bit of the credit.
But your starting point is to work with what you have. The more time you waste seeking extra resources, the lower your chances of overall success. If you want to avoid the concertina, do some initial planning and get going.
3.Workload will expand and contract
Like a concertina in fact, if you had not spotted the link.
The fact is that life as a senior leader does not have to be 100 mph all the time. Fun though it can be to put some metaphorical fires out, that needs to be the exception, not the rule. If it is already the latter then have a look at this.
The trick is to identify the pinch points, then plan around them. Most organisations are pretty good with their calendars. If week X in month Y already has an external audit, an evening event and a third of the team booked out on leave (thanks) then it may not be the week to plan on getting a lot of the deep work done.
Not every week is like that, and it’s the ‘ordinary’ weeks you are looking for. Anything a little lighter than average is an opportunity to cut through the detail and make big strides.
Preferably that means just one area. It is incredible how much you can get done when you avoid the distractions around you, and when other events do not stand in your way. If you can spot the ordinary weeks then book your work from home time if that helps you.
Alternatively block out large chunks of time, for example several half days, for working exclusively on that single area of focus. By that I do not mean clearing ‘the pile’. Pile clearing can be done in short bursts of time. When you have the luxury of a number of clear hours ahead of you, use them for the deep work.
You do not need to say, or to know, exactly what you will be doing with the project at that time. But you do need to be disciplined about blocking out the time.
4.Know your stakeholders
If you are a senior leader then you have lots of stakeholders, likely more than you might ever realise.
Constructing a stakeholder map is as good a proactive task you can carry out. It will be relevant to all of your significant areas of work. It will not only include everyone you manage, but those who have a functional relationship with what you do. It should also contain everyone you report to, and who they report to in turn.
The point is this. When you know your stakeholders, you find out who is most capable of triggering the concertina out of nowhere because of the question asked at the trustee meeting. When they know you, they will call you first and a storm can be prevented.
Even better than that is knowing which levers to pull, and who can pull them for you. Support for what you want to achieve can come from unlikely places.
Part of your initial planning is working exactly who, and what, is around you. They can guide you in the right direction, stop you pursuing a line of enquiry which can waste weeks, and connect you with others who can help.
Senior leaders manage intricate landscapes. Knowing your stakeholders so you can avoid getting entangled in a bureaucratic mess is invaluable in making strong progress. Your project could go a long way to solving someone else’s problem, who will be only too happy to offer their support. But unless you know the territory it will not happen.
Remember that
Concertinas are not inevitable. Reputationally they can cause you a lot of damage because it gives the impression that you have ‘lost control’.
The vast majority of people want you to succeed. Let them help you. Articulate the concerns you have with your closest confidants (or of course your leadership coach!). They will have their own stories to tell. The likelihood is that their concertina story will be far worse than yours can ever be.
How can I help you?
1. One to one coaching programmes for senior leaders who are swamped by their jobs so they can thrive in life. Click here to discover where you are on your journey from Frantic to Fulfilled? Just 5 minutes of your time and you will receive a full personalised report with guidance on your next steps!
2. Team coaching programmes - working IN a team is not the same as working AS a team and yet they are often treated as if they are the same. I help teams move from the former to the latter, and generate huge shifts in productivity and outcomes.
3. Talks, workshops and seminars - including topics relevant to the two areas above plus explaining Gen Z to Gen X.
