MORE THOUGHTS ON LEADERSHIP
Leaders must always display professionalism if they want to earn the trust of their organization, peers, bosses, associates, and outside organizations. A big part of that is to take serious things seriously, but don’t take them personally. When you cross that line- or give the impression you do- relationships will be different. You won’t get the honest bottom-up feedback you need to make the organization and yourself successful, and people outside your organization will look elsewhere for partners.
A few ways to look at time management.
The Basics - Don’t do things that other people can or should do. But to be an effective leader and organization, there needs to be systems/checks to ensure that people are doing those things. Effort and time must be invested to ensure people understand what is expected of them and that they are properly resourced. The systems/checks must be a combination of direct and indirect methods. Work hard to ensure the checks are not perceived as micro-management or show a lack of trust. If that is the perception, it will stifle innovation, motivation, and you will lose your best people.
The Advanced – Plan your time to work at 70% of your capacity. Define what that capacity realistically is- what is sustainable for you and your team. Work to understand how your capacity affects the effectiveness of your team. You can’t work at a constant sprint; you can’t do more with less. It’s not balance, it's what is sustainable to enable you and the organization to get better, innovate, and at a minimum, be the fastest follower in reacting to changing situations. If you constantly work at 100% of your capacity, you will not have time to deal with the unexpected. When the unexpected does come up, like, well, every day, you will not spend time on certain things. The problem is that the things you are not going to do because you are dealing with the unexpected, more times than not, will not be picked up by others. This creates gaps and decisions that have not had 2nd and 3rd order effects considered. This leads to “good decisions” being made over and over again. Consistently working at 70% of your capacity leads to 70% effectiveness. Attempting to work at 100% of your capacity leads to 50% effectiveness.
RLTW!
mike