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What Results Are Expected of You?

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A key question for staying on track with your work is this: what are the results expected of me? Each week, each quarter, and each month?

You need to have a general answer for this, and then you need to translate that specifically to each week and each day.

It works best to define your tasks from those results—rather than starting with the tasks and trying to get to the results. Start with the results and work backwards. That may sound easy, but most of us (including me) all too easily start the other way around—tasks to results.

Reclaiming Monday

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Getting back into your work rhythm after a weekend can be a challenge. Here’s a simple framework for planning your workweek so you can dive back into your most important work:

Pray

  • “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” – Ps. 127:1
  • “Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established.” – Prov. 16:3

Plan

Review your mission and values.

  • Am I still aiming for these long-term goals? Do I need to update?
  • Does this work align with my values? Does it move toward my mission and goals?

Define your priorities for the week.

  • What do I need to do this week? What would I like to do?
  • What should I do this week to fulfill each of my roles?
  • What should I do this week to move towards my goals?
  • What should I do this week for each of my major projects?
  • What should I do this week from my action list?
  • What is on my calendar this week?
  • How could I help people in need, fight injustice, or promote my family’s/church’s/community’s good?

Organize your priorities in a way that makes them easy to do.

  • Which of these items are small? Which will take more time or investment?
  • Is this list doable within one week? If not, what should I eliminate or delay? What is most crucial?
  • Which of these items need to be scheduled? When should they be done?
  • Which of these small actions can I accomplish right now?

For more detail on weekly planning and applying these questions, see Chapter 19 in What’s Best Next.

How Leaders Accomplish More by Doing Less

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A remarkably high number of new executives fail within their first 18 months, and it’s not because they were promoted above their skill set. Often it’s because they keep filling their schedules with the tasks they did well in their previous role instead of leading.

What does it look like to lead productively?

Matt Perman helps you think through your leadership priorities and develop strategies to succeed.

Download the free article “How Leaders Accomplish More By Doing Less.”

The Five Components of Effective Delegation

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My article for Catalyst on The Five Components of Effective Delegation is now up at their site. Here’s the start:

WITH SO MANY THINGS ON OUR TO-DO LISTS AND SO MANY NEW THINGS COMING AT US EVERY DAY, HOW DO WE STAY ABOVE WATER AS LEADERS?

One common answer is delegation. That’s good advice, but it’s often incomplete. The problem is that we often aren’t taught how to delegate effectively. As a result, when we finally overcome the mistake of not delegating at all, we easily end up making the other mistake of delegating in the wrong way. Unfortunately, this mistake can be even worse! Bad delegation results in frustration, confusion, and discouragement for the people we delegate to.

So how do we delegate in a way that works? That is, what does real delegation actually look like, and how do we do it?

Read the whole thing.

How to Delegate When You're Overwhelmed

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This is a really good article over at 99U on overcoming the biggest obstacle to delegation. I love out how it starts out by nailing the exact difficulty that I find with delegation:

You’ve tried every productivity hack in the book and have reached your max capacity in terms of output. You know that you need outside help to bring the work to the next level… but you hesitate. On the one hand, the idea of not having to do everything yourself really appeals to you. On the other, you wonder if you can handle the management responsibilities on top of your already heavy workload.

Your concerns are valid. In order for people to help you, they need to know what you need and to receive feedback and direction along the way. Your workflow that was uniquely yours will now have to account for another person. With the right systems and communication, this process can run relatively smoothly. But without them, the people who were supposed to help can end up creating more work.

She then gives five very helpful strategies. It’s worth the read.

 

Crossing the Gap of the Self-Starter

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Being a self-starter is one of the most important ingredients for effectiveness. If you can’t motivate yourself and get yourself going, it’s hard to do anything.

Ironically, however, once you get going, being a self-starter also creates your biggest problem. Your own talent of being a self-starter can work against you. The reason is that self-starters are very good at doing everything themselves — that’s one reason they can get things going so well. But, in order to scale, you need to move beyond doing everything yourself to working through others. The (very good) characteristics of being a self-starter interfere with that and thus interfere with the ability to scale.

Scott Belsky says this well in his excellent book Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality:

Self-starters are often successful doing everything themselves. However, when forced to grow beyond a one-person show, many creative people struggle to make the leap from a solo success to a successful collaboration.

There is a way around this. The key is to develop the capacity and habit to delegate more and turn the work over to the team. This is very hard to do, and actually takes practice, but can be done. And the first step is in recognizing that there is a difference between doing and leading. It’s possible to do both; but we need to be aware of the differences and make the intentional shift from one to the other, lest your focus on doing undo your ability to lead.