“I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do now. If I get into some of the day-to-day tasks, I’ll get in my team’s way and create a bottleneck.”
A client shared this concern on a call a few weeks ago. During our partnership over the last eight months, this CEO, whom we’ll call Jane, had worked thoughtfully on clarifying her goals, defining the roles for her team members, and letting them step more fully into their leadership. Jane had a vision for how the business could grow, and her actions would get them there.
The only problem?
Jane’s plan was working.
You read that right. Her direct reports were handling more of the day-to-day, leading their teams like management pros. They handled customer issues and challenges, occasionally escalating them to Jane for help. Most of the time, though? They were able to handle the issues on their own.
Now, our CEO wasn’t sure what to do with her time.
Despite all of our fantasies (“Oh, just think of all the things I could do if I stopped putting out fires and managing every little thing!”), we don’t put a lot of stock into the reality of what we’d do when it ACTUALLY happens. Jane had climbed the mountain … and, once she reached the long-dreamed-of peak, she had no idea where to go from there.
Jane had always been comfortable jumping into the day-to-day work. That’s how she built the business in the first place. She knew the ins and outs and could run the company as well as her team. But, since that expertise wasn’t what her team needed from her now, discomfort and a whole new set of challenges kicked in.
What the business and her team needed instead was the next-level version of Jane as CEO—the person laser-focused on building relationships and taking strategic action to grow the business. With her team in place and focused, they’d be ready to take on the new business Jane brought in.
The challenge for Jane, of course, is that this shift required different responsibilities and a different mindset than she’d had before. No longer the “do-er” in chief, now it was up to Jane to identify ideal customers and market to them. To be clear: Jane was perfectly capable of embracing this new approach. But since she built the business to where it is today by being the “do-er” of the work, she’d never had time to develop a future-looking business strategy.
Jane’s not alone in this conundrum. We frequently see clients who feel like they’re drifting because their value no longer stems from them doing the work. It’s a big change, and every change involves a sense of loss. In this case, it’s a loss of comfort that comes from doing familiar things for years—and the discomfort of stepping into the unknown where they must learn, stretch, and grow.
In our work with Jane, we’ve gone back to the basics of her role. Since she’s checked off so many items from the short-term objectives, we’ve started looking at her mid-term goals. We’ve also resurfaced Jane’s own job description to make sure her responsibilities and objectives are aligned to meet the mid-term goals for growth.
At the end of the day, Jane (and CEOs like her) needed a reset. Jane benefited from (and deserved!) a deliberate pause to acknowledge and recognize all the progress she’d made so far, to then develop a clear plan for how to get to the next level.
Not everyone can make this shift, and not all CEOs want to, either. If you believe your business is due for a reset, let’s set up a call to discuss how People Spark can help you and your team keep moving forward.