There comes a point as a business leader when you realise something important:
You shouldn’t be doing most of the work you’re currently doing.
In the early days, or when you were more junior, it’s normal to do a bit of everything. To make the plans and follow them through.
As you progress your to-do list should change too. But all too often you simply accumulate tasks and responsibilities – keeping you from the places you can make a real impact.
Here’s how to change things.
The problem: Doing versus leading
Throughout our professional lives we learn to feel good when we can be hands on. After all, doing the work yourself feels productive and useful.
It’s quite likely that you are good at lots of things.
You may well have once been the best person for every job as your career progressed.
But as your organisation grows, the role you need to play changes too. Because the skills that got you here aren’t necessarily the ones that will take you forward.
And what’s needed from you now is leadership.
Why it’s so hard to let go
A lot of the senior business leaders I work with struggle to let go of their to do list.
Why? It usually comes down to one of these reasons:
- Control: Letting go of the day to day feels like a loss of influence, and some fear they’ll lose touch with what’s really going on
- Identity: Work can easily become identity – and it’s easy to worry about what will be left if you let go
- Comfort: Trusting your team is hard, and it’s much easier to just ‘do it yourself’ than delegate or explain.
The problem is that all this leads to is a diary filled with tactical tasks that others can do better, faster, or cheaper – while you’re left with less space for the work that actually needs you.
The cost of doing too much
When you hold onto tasks that are no longer yours, it shows up in three predictable ways:
- You’re always busy, but rarely have time to think. Your job now is to be strategic – and that requires headspace and time away from operational work.
- You’re always on the backfoot. An overfocus on the day to day means deadlines, emails and urgent tasks take over, removing your ability to direct things proactively according to a considered plan.
- You feel less impactful. When the tasks you’re doing don’t really need your experience or perspective, you’re likely to be making less of an impact on the business. And that’s an unfulfilling feeling to have.
So what work really matters?
Here’s the rule of thumb:
If it could be done by someone else – better (or at least as well as you could do it), faster, or cheaper – then it probably shouldn’t be on your plate.
Quick task time: remind yourself what your job really exists for. Take a few minutes to make a short list of the underlying objective of your role.
It might be to:
- Set direction
- Make choices others can’t – and be accountable for them
- Create an environment where people can do their best work
- Ask the questions that matter
- Hold the long view, and plan for the future
These objectives aren’t always easy to track, and there isn’t always an obvious next action you can take to achieve them.
But they are likely to be the real purpose of your job, and the purpose of true leadership.
How to move forward
It’s time to let go of the tasks that are clogging up your time. And that means delegating – more on that here.
It’s a strategic error to retain work you shouldn’t be doing, so find another way of getting it done.
In time, you’ll notice that far from feeling further away from the work, you’ll feel able to affect change in a much more impactful way.
You’ll find yourself able to notice patterns, with time and space to think and plan. You’ll find you can make better, more meaningful decisions based on clarity and focus rather than an urgent need for an answer.
Time to embrace the change
Instead of mourning the work that’s left behind, business leaders who truly embrace their new role find their energy rising. They feel effective, they feel useful, and they feel the value their experience allows them to contribute.
It’s one of the most powerful career transitions you can make – from doing to leading.
And all too often it’s blocked because leaders are doing work they shouldn’t be doing. Which leaves them overwhelmed, frustrated, and stuck in a reactive loop.
If any of this resonates with you – if your calendar is full but your head isn’t clear – perhaps it’s time to look at what you should stop doing.
Because as a leader, the right work isn’t the work with your name on it.
It’s the work only you can do.Kind Regards,
Chris