I had a real wake-up call in a senior role when working late in the office one night. A colleague much more junior than me, who knew I often worked late said 'Do you mind me asking, are you strategic or operational?'
It really pulled me up short. The reality was that yes, my role was strategic, but because I was trying to impress by being all over everything, I was spending way too many hours on delivery too. I should have been either delegating that delivery to someone else, or saying no to more so that I could actually focus on what mattered most to the business, which was the strategic bit of my role.
As a result of that simple little comment from a junior colleague I had a good old think about how I really should be spending my time. I also woke up to the fact that our junior colleagues don't want to think that they will be pounding away at the keyboard late at night when they are in more senior roles, so they don't expect us to be doing it.
We may think that we're being collegiate and collaborative by taking on tasks that can be done by others, but we're often sending the wrong message, or preventing more junior colleagues from getting involved in more interesting projects.
Now, I know that there are lots of points to discuss around all of this and no hard and fast rules, but if you're in a senior role, it's well worth having a good think about:-
- What you're actually spending your time on and why?
- What you should be spending your time on and what the business actually needs from you
- What you could and should be delegating, and why.
Sometimes it's the simplest observations that pull you up short and change the way you work. This was one of my own lightbulb moments!
