Please don’t ever believe that the role of an executive is to merely ‘think’ and never ‘do.’
Yes, your tasks may be radically different than previous roles. You will need to spend more time thinking and planning than doing. But if you never roll up your sleeves to make things happen, big dreams won’t become a reality.
You can’t always be in the sky creating new schemes or you will quickly lose your sense of practicality. You’ll lose touch with the day-to-day operations of your company and the people in it. This is a fast road to failure.
As an executive, you need to be a doer. But you also need to be smart about how much time you personally spend on implementation and what tasks you assume.
As an example, it might not be in the company’s best interest to have you placing every call to get the wheels in motion for your big idea. But it might fast-track the project if you personally place calls to strategic partners. You may need to be the spokesperson for your big idea, rallying support across the company.
With every task consider, ‘Is this the most appropriate use of my time? If I take this on, do I accelerate or improve the project greatly?’
Needless to say, if you’re in a smaller organization, you may need to spend more time on implementation. Even so, consider using contract employees, agencies, and other third-party resources to outsource some of the work.
As long as your big ideas produce strong financial results, most of your time should be spent on creating and overseeing big ideas. But exceptional executives have their feet on the ground and aren’t afraid to be part of the action.
Need to think bigger? Check out Lisa’s book LEAD ADVANCED.
Comments