When a junior person wastes time, it usually results in other people having to pick up some of their work. When a senior person wastes time there will be far more long-term consequences because other people don’t have the strategic oversight they have.
Digitisation has created a thick layer of extra work on top of our real work. It is getting increasingly harder to dig through it. We think that because ‘everyone can type’ we can do our own admin. Check your pay statement. Are you paid to do admin?
If your time is squandered on low value tasks that you can’t delegate or automate, then it’s time you hired an Assistant.
As an individual contributor you do a few things just right. As a leader you are responsible for doing much bigger things really well. This takes time. Paying for top quality administrative support invariably increases profitability because it frees up valuable time to do what matters: gaining competitive advantage, not turning the wheels.
My most successful clients have their heads up. They don’t get bogged down arranging their own meetings and travel, or responding to emails that should never have reached them, or searching for information, formatting documents, or writing decks.
Take yourself seriously and make a business case to get the best support you can afford. I find that entrepreneurs are particularly poor at this, working around the clock to do everything themselves.
One client I worked with made the brave decision to cull an ineffective sales manager and then hired a pricey Executive Assistant with the spare salary. This ruffled a few feathers, but the time she freed up in her calendar enabled her to train her sales team herself. We saw the results in less than one quarter.
Being a control freak is a false economy. I should know. When I had a recruitment company an advisor told me to work as if I was a salaried CEO brought in to protect my family’s financial future. Would I allow that CEO to waste time on small stuff, like I was doing at the time? Ouch. After I sorted myself out I wrote the book on it.
CYA cultures
A big red flag of a Cover Your Ass, psychologically unsafe, culture is when the boss is copied in on too many emails. This is the opposite of an empowered culture where people are crystal clear on what their desired output is and have the freedom to do it.
Rookies may be required to copy their managers in so that problems can be spotted early, but as soon as someone knows what they are doing, the copying should stop. Otherwise, managers will waste time reading emails instead of doing their job. That’s crazy busyness right there.
If you train, coach, measure and check in with your team properly you should be confident to let them get on with it.
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