You’re a good leader. You know where your organization needs to go. So why are you spending Tuesday afternoon solving a scheduling problem, approving a routine purchase, or answering a question someone else should be able to answer? Leaders stuck in the weeds rarely get there because they lack leadership ability. More often, the day-to-day work has simply grown up around them.
The problem with weeds is that they don’t announce themselves. One small task seems harmless. Then another needs your attention. Before long, you’re spending so much time looking down at what’s immediately in front of you that you’ve lost sight of where you’re going. How did you get there?
Are You Leading—or Just Pulling Weeds?
Here are four reasons good leaders can find themselves stuck:
You’re still doing what you used to do. As your organization grows or changes, responsibilities that once appropriately belonged to you may need to move to someone else. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you still should.
Everything still comes through you. Decisions, approvals and problems have a way of migrating upward. If too many roads lead to your desk, you can unintentionally become the bottleneck.
Urgent work crowds out important work. The weeds demand attention now. Strategy, staff development, relationship-building and future opportunities are easier to put off until tomorrow. How many important priorities have been waiting for “when things settle down”?
You simply don’t have enough leadership capacity. Sometimes better delegation and time management aren’t the answer. There may simply be more executive-level work than your existing leadership team has the bandwidth to handle.
Being stuck in the weeds isn’t always a time-management problem. Sometimes it’s a leadership-capacity problem.
Take a look at where your time is going. Are you doing work that truly requires you? What important work isn’t getting done because your attention is somewhere else? Sometimes adding experienced leadership capacity—even temporarily or fractionally—can give you the lift you need to get above the weeds and focus again on where your organization is going. You haven’t peaked yet!