Are you overloaded, continually context switching from email, meetings, projects and conversations? Do you feel like you are never giving your best to anything and are exhausted at the end of the day?
“What got you here won’t get you there.”
Marshall Goldsmith
Reactive Zone
If you are, then I bet you are spending too much time in the reactive zone where your time and deadlines are controlled by others. A zone that makes you feel like a hero because you divert a crisis, solve problems and keep everyone happy.
It’s easier to do this than the stuff that is going to take too much time to see a result or push you out of your comfort zone. That can wait. Or can it?
Proactive Zone
The hero zone eats your time and energy, will eventually cause burnout and stops you focussing on your growth and the growth of the business.
If you want to control your own workload, then you need to stop being a hero and shift your focus to the proactive zone by delegating or dropping the reactive work.
Drop It
It may be possible to drop some of this reactive work all together by –
- Technology change
- Process changes
- Hard conversation if the business case does not stack up
- Brainstorming with your team for options
Are You Getting in Your Own Way?
Other than the hero feeling, what else has stopped you delegating this work or dropping it before?
- It’s just easier to do it yourself
- You enjoy doing it too much
- It only takes you a minute
- Others won’t do it as well
- No one is capable of doing it
- The team is already busy on important work
- What else?
Getting out of your way is critical here, it allows you, your team and the business to grow.
Quick Win
At the end of the transformation shift, you will be able to use your experience to make the most significant impact on the business as well as find some time and energy to spend with your loving family.
It takes a while to make a change like this, so what is this first quick win you can target? If you need an accountability partner, just let me know.
Your virtual coach
Nick