Not having things too easy
Be Humble - that’s one of our 6 core values. We try really hard to live it, but sometimes challenges creep up in subtle ways.
As leaders, it’s easy to have your team do things for you. First it starts innocuously with, “Hey, can you take a moment to check this number for me?”. This eventually can become “Hey, can you call the hotel and organize a dinner booking, then change my flights online to a later time, also can you put together a quick 20 slide presentation for our meeting later, and don’t forget to keep the receipts and claim the dinner on my behalf?”
We’ve effectively delegated all the “real work” out. Direct others, and things get done accordingly - magic. Leaders should focus their valuable time on directing right?
Here’s the danger: Leaders can quickly lose sight of the dirty, but critical details. Not knowing how work gets done means you can lose sight of what it actually takes to get things done. Who has ever set an unrealistic deadline for your team, and watch them scramble nights and weekends to pull things together? What about providing unrealistic guidance on the completion of initiatives and projects? Or what about deciding something on a whim that adds more administrative work for the team? All these are relatable examples of the disconnect that can happen between leaders and their team who have to execute. This is one easy way to lose your team’s trust.
What’s a good way to counter this? Force yourself to do the painful stuff daily. Send calendar invites yourself when you call for meetings (Google Calendar!), book your own travel (online!), try and reconcile an invoice from a vendor, take customer calls, deliver a parcel, or work in the warehouse for the day.
We’ve found many of our best process changes and decisions came out as a result of having to experience the pain first-hand of routine work. So this is an added method to bust through processes and bureaucracy that creep up in any organization over time too.
Hey, if Yngve Slyngstad, the head of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund (Norway’s US$1 trillion oil fund), has no secretary, arranges his own meetings and makes his own travel bookings then surely all of us have no excuses either.
One specific thing I force myself to do that has helped cut out 50% of unnecessary communication and requests to the team is this: on a daily basis, I save and organize every single file attachment that I receive from emails, Slack, Workchat etc. into my own Dropbox. I also use Google G Suite to ensure all spreadsheets, presentations and documents are on a shared basis. As a result I rarely ask my team where this or that file is, or where I can refer to this or that piece of information. I do my own filing, file name labeling, and categorization. Even when I’m on the road, I do it through my iPhone.
In any business, the ability to respond and react promptly, consistently, and reliably are hallmarks of good management. Half the battle is just knowing where the right information is saved!
