Leadership Tasks v. Busy Work

When I transitioned from a corporate job to starting my own business, I had a period of adjustment regarding what a "workday" looked like. In the corporate world, meetings abound, fighting fires usually wins the day, and whatever the boss makes a priority becomes your focus too. But when you are on your own, suddenly you have a lot of discretionary time and, to be honest, you have a lot of time that can be wasted if you aren't disciplined.

I remember seeing a quote that gave me great pause during this period of transition:

"Don't confuse being busy with being important."

This was so true for me. If I didn't have a full day of meetings and hard-stop deadlines, I didn't feel like I won the day. I know I'm not alone in the leadership world in saying that leaders can measure their importance by how packed their schedule is or how many back-to-back meetings they have daily.

As leaders, it is important that we use our time wisely and that we don't fill the calendar with busy work when the more difficult job of leading is beckoning our attention. Here are five types of busy work that many managers hide behind:

1. Sitting in email all day. You know who you are!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rather than being proactive and moving your team forward, you hide in your office and manage by email - resist people! Resist!

   
   

2. Attending meetings where you are not needed. If you have two or three people from your team sitting in on the same meeting, it is not a good use of your time.

   
   

3. Looking at Reports that you don't understand. Leaders get lots and lots of reports. If you don't fully understand the takeaways from each report, get with the subject matter expert and whittle down what you should be looking at.

   
   

4. Over-preparing for Presentations. This happens particularly when a presentation is late in the day. Leaders can sometimes spend the whole day working in preparation for this one meeting instead of limiting the prep and working on other matters.

   
   

5. Doing research that anyone can do. Say you are looking for a video to show at your staff meeting on managing conflict or maybe you need some research on industry trends to include in a presentation. Utilize all the people (aka the real experts) to gather this information for you and move on to more managerial-level work.

   
   

   This is just a snippet of the types of busy work that executives can hunker down on when their expertise is needed elsewhere. Booking travel, doing expense reports, approving vacation requests, booking off-site meetings....you get the idea! Think about the work and whether or not you are the best person for some of these tasks!

   
   

   When we think about how leaders should be spending their time, these are the tasks that come to my mind:

   
   

   a. Troubleshooting: meeting with your leaders to see what obstacles are in their paths and helping them work past them.

   
   

   b. Reading: what is going on in the industry and with technology that you need to know more about? Are there any new regulations that are pending that you need to get in front of? What are your competitors doing that gets you thinking about your team and situation?

   
   

   c. Planning: this is a big one.....reviewing staffing, the budget, all pending projects, the performance of new hires, KPIs for each of your teams, upcoming acquisitions or changes. This is thoughtful work that requires some concentration and analysis --- not to be done between emails.

   
   

   d. Listening: you have to stay in touch with your customers and with your team members. Surveys, team huddles, skip level meetings, listening to customer phone calls, reviewing customer complaints, and having breakfast with employees outside of your organization. This doesn't just happen - it needs to be done with intentionality and (I hope it goes without saying) there needs to be a plan to do something with the information you gather.

   
   

   e. Managing Up and Sideways: you control the message of what your team is accomplishing and how this work makes a difference in the organization. Sending updates to your boss, meeting with your peers to share project successes, and listening to the feedback you receive are all important aspects of a leader's work.

   
   

   The best way to think through this "important" vs. "busy" mentality is to become a hard ass about your schedule. Focus your limited time and energy on work worthy of a great leader ---- and move in that direction every day. If you master this challenge about your daily focus, you will be better than 90% of the leaders out there. Good luck!