Don’t Put Out The Trash Can Fires

Too many managers learn a very bad lesson as managers: trying to do everything. Too many of us managers are afraid to fail, which we mistakenly believe means dropping ANY of the balls we know we’re supposed to be juggling. And that means trying to do everything - which is not a manager’s job - and therefore doing everything poorly because we’re not concentrating on the most important plates. In this guidance, we dismantle that approach because at the executive level it won’t just wear you down, it will get you fired.

At the executive level, your workload expands massively. (If your workload hasn’t massively expanded, you’re probably not actually an executive). But if all you know how to do is “get everything done,” you’ll fail because the scope of an executive role is too much for that brute force approach. As an executive a huge part of your job is deciding. And part of that deciding is about what to work on and what NOT to work on. And that means no one can make any exec-level org as neat and tidy as you might want to keep your home. Your’e going to have raggedy edges, indicating problems exist that you know about and choose not to spend time fixing.