Super easy to get caught up in the daily grind of things to get done. My journal right now looks like a war zone of scribble, sticky notes, and writing all over the place as I try to capture great phrases and interesting insights from my CEO and colleagues during meetings.
If I'm diligent I'll at least transfer this chicken scratch to an email to record it, before tomorrow's meetings and insights roll over today's.
Do this enough times and you can see how the drudgery of work begins to build--it's just stuff--endless stuff to do.
But on my whiteboard I also have my objectives I'm doing all of these tasks to support. I'm still a bit in start-up land so things move fast. But as I get ground into a nub over the minute tasks that apparently there's no one else around to do, I make sure that whatever that small task is, I keep my eye on the big picture.
As leaders it's easiest to get caught up in all the details--the 1:1's, the follow-ups, the editing and approving. But we need to remember that our teams are also looking to us to lift their eyes up to see the bigger picture and align all of *their* mundane tasks with the bigger objectives that you're trying to achieve.
So from time to time shoot out a Slack, a quick email--convene a quick all-hands or drop in on a departmental meeting--just to make sure the team knows that YOU know that it's not all meetings and PPT slides they and you are doing for the sake of just moving the ball around, but to move the ball forward. And make sure they can trace their work--and you can trace YOUR work--to the objectives at hand.
Comments