Most days, I get up at 5 am, make myself a coffee and do an hour or so of writing before waking the rest of the household up and getting all of us ready to meet our commitments for the day. Being able to flow from writing to getting ready to do deep work for my employer suits me very well.
I always struggle with afternoons, though. I lose the ability to focus, and time seems to drag. Filling the afternoon with meetings and communications keeps me engaged in work nicely.
I’ve tried to create schedules like this with clients and employers in the past. It always seemed to me that I should be able to set boundaries that allow me to perform at my best for the organisation's benefit. Yet many leaders think their employees should be at their beck and call. This brings me to the two questions that have troubled me most of my career.
What do leaders want from their team members?
How can leaders get out of the way and let them achieve it?
Over the years, I’ve learned how to manage upwards better. I don’t want to manipulate them; I want to understand and communicate how we can best work together. A leader represents the organisation’s requirements, so I need to understand them and convey how likely I am to meet them.
I use Kanban for my work. I record lead and cycle times for activity categories. This allows me to estimate relatively accurately when I can start a task and when I can deliver it.
Over time, my leaders develop trust in my ability to do what they’ve asked of me by the time I’ve said I can do it by.
This gets them out of my way.
Once a leader trusts a subordinate enough to get out of their way, those members can dictate more about how and when they do all the different activities required to complete their workflows. I love that I’ve found this formula, but it annoys me that I had to find a formula to develop trust, and only then did I get the freedom to do my best.
Just like our legal system presumes innocence, shouldn’t our leaders presume competence and dedication?