While it is critically important to concentrate on the smallest relevant aspects of your job without losing sight of the big picture, it is easy to become so completely overwhelmed by ongoing setbacks that you start focusing on issues completely extraneous to improvement in an attempt to keep from having to look at intractable problems.
A coach who becomes afflicted with the malady of “trivialities” might suddenly and compulsively worry about whether all of the practice uniforms have been laundered correctly (“Can’t you get all of those grass stains out?”); obsess over luncheons with local fan clubs; and take inordinate pride in various award ceremonies or alumni gatherings… All of this is an escape mechanism – a method of distracting yourself from the tough work ahead.
As a leader, when you find yourself with a host of problems that seemingly defy solution and start dwelling on the least relevant or even irrelevant aspects of your job – constantly sitting on the phone with nonessential conversations, doing endless e-mailing, writing memo after memo, fiddling around getting all your pencils sharpened and lined up perfectly, being excessively concerned about hurting feelings and trying to make sure everyone is comfortable, straitening out your desk drawer, getting wrapped up in the details of the annual Christmas party, and a million other kinds of stupid busywork, tell yourself this: “There’ll be plenty of time for pencils, parties, and socializing when I lose my job, because that’s what’s going to happen if I continue to avoid the hard and harsh realities of doing my job.”
Sharpening your pencils in lieu of sharpening your organization’s performance is one way to lose your job. Here are ten additional nails you can pound into your professional coffin:
1. Exhibit patience, paralyzing patience.
2. Engage in delegating – massive delegating – or conversely, engage in too little delegating.
3. Act in a tedious, overly cautious manner.
4. Become best buddies with certain employees.
5. Spend excessive amounts of time socializing with superiors or subordinates.
6. Fail to continue hard-nosed performance evaluations of longtime – “tenured” – staff members, the ones most likely to go on cruise control, to relax.
7. Fail to actively participate in efforts to appraise and acquire new hires.
8. Trust others to carry out your fundamental duties.
9. Find ways to get out from under the responsibilities of your position, to move accountability from yourself to others – the blame game.
10. Promote and organizational environment that is comfortable and laid-back in the misbelief that the workplace should be fun, lighthearted, and free from appropriate levels of tension and urgency.
Taken from The Score Takes Care Of Itself by Bill Walsh.