Here is my question for you: What exactly are you getting paid to do? For the answer, omit your job title, omit your constellation of job tasks, omit your team’s larger mission. What exactly are you getting paid to do? Meaning, above all else, what result are you responsible for creating? If you are in sales, then the answer might be “selling cars.” If you are in medicine, the answer might be “delivering babies.” If you are an architect, the answer might be “designing homes.” Try to identify that one thing, or those few things. (It shouldn’t be more than a few things.) Really dig into this and figure it out, if you haven’t done so already. Do you have it crystal clear? Good. Now, use the lens of that one thing to judge everything you actually do on a daily basis. Here’s my bet on what you will find. The one thing you get paid to do is constantly under attack by other things you could do, or things that others give you to do. I bring this up because the days that are the most frantic and frenetic are usually the days I feel least positive about. Ever have days like those? Busy is not necessarily effective, and effective is what we get paid to be. So, sometimes a reset is in order. A reset that helps us restore focus.
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...