What do we think about $1,000 people doing $10 tasks?

This came up the other day when a senior manager told us that they could ‘knock off a few bits of marketing content’ themselves.

In fact, this was helpful because they wanted us to do lots of other stuff (which they did not have the skills/knowledge for) at the same time.

The output was perfectly OK.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that ‘knocking off a few bits of content’ is not their job.

And every hour they spend on ‘a few bits of content’ is time spent NOT fulfilling their main responsibilities.

In other words, by being distracted doing a number of $10 tasks, this person was failing to do their $1,000 duties.

In fact, if this particular senior manager had been more focused on their $1,000 responsibilities, they would have had the whole project further advanced, better organised, with deeper buy-in from stakeholders, such that the panicked workload that needed them to write those ‘few bits of content’ would never have occurred.

Sometimes, I think this is a confidence thing.

People are appointed to positions which they are not (quite) qualified for.

Then they panic that their lack of capability, or skills, or knowledge, will be found out.

So, they start doing $10 tasks to mask that fact that they’re not confident in achieving their $1,000 challenges.

This is real lesson for the directors to whom they report. Something for those directors to keep a firm eye on. Because if senior managers aren’t focusing on the difficult, skilled, senior stuff, they’re not delivering the value for which they’ve been hired.

I know this because (hands up!) I’ve sometimes caught myself at it.

It’s not so much that I’ve been avoiding difficult or challenging goals… but more that I’ve become obsessed with all aspects of a project and haven’t delegated some of the more administrative research or compilation duties to a colleague.

The result of my obsessive tendency is just as commercially poor, though.

I’m still not delivering as much value into the organisation as I could and should.

My time spent on the details of a project that could be delegated is stopping me from doing the hard stuff on more projects—and therefore earning the company more money

So, I may be casting stones, but I’m by no means perfect either.

Food for thought for us all as we go up the seniority ladder!

I hope you find these bulletins entertaining. I’m happy to discuss all relevant engagements – from customer community creation, to directorial mentoring, to strategy development, to thought-leadership content development, to full campaign structuring and management, and more.

Do get in touch!