Common sense but not common practice? 🤷♀️🤷🏽♂️
‘My biggest frustrations are the volume of work and my ever-changing priorities’.
You know how it is. You’re making inroads into your biggest projects and suddenly you have to put everything on hold while you prioritise budget cuts.
Or a member of your team leaves and there’s no budget to replace her – or if there is, it’s hard to find the right person or the recruitment process takes ages.
Or a crisis happens and you have to drop everything.
Sound familiar?
Leadership life is rarely predictable or plain sailing.
Given that the unexpected will always happen, what can you do?
The worst thing you can do is keep ploughing through – even though that sometimes seems like the only solution. (I did that for years and it didn’t make me wiser!).
The best thing you can do is schedule time each week/month/quarter to think properly about what you’re trying to achieve. This is one of those simple habits that pays dividends for your focus and clarity. Block this time out in your calendar for the next few months, be uncontactable and do your best thinking. (This definitely makes me wiser.)
Even better? Have time at the beginning of each day to ask yourself, ‘What will success look like for me today?’ Then plan accordingly rather than getting subsumed by emails and ‘Have you got a minute’ conversations.
Does this reduce the volume of work?
I’ve found it does. My busy leader clients find that it does, too. (Even though they might resist the idea at first.)
When you slow down, you find more efficient ways of working.
You realise you don’t have to attend that meeting.
You find ways to make your meetings more output focused.
You help people to execute, not just talk about it.
You communicate more clearly saving hours of confusion.
You focus on the ‘end in mind’ for your conversations or presentations.
I know this works because I do it myself most days—and on the days I don’t, I’m way less focused and organised than I could be. I’m distracted and I go down rabbit holes.
Slowing down to speed up might not solve everything overnight, but it’s a great place to start.