Leadership Challenge #22: Systematizing the Small Stuff

It’s a random Tuesday at 8:40 AM. I sit down at my desk after walking around and checking in with my team, gulping down some much-needed coffee, and taking a pronounced deep breath. Now, I dive into the task that terrifies me more than anything else I do… checking my email. If I were to tell younger me that the scariest part of my day, as a leader, would be looking at my inbox, I surely wouldn’t have believed myself. When I took my first people-leadership role, I feared the really scary stuff: A staff member in crisis; A student group organizing, or a student newspaper article railing against the division I led because of something that I (or my team) said or did; How to manage a shrinking budget while simultaneously managing up and managing down…?

Years (read: decades) after that first leadership role, I find that the most terrifying element of my job is the unwieldy list of demands that vie for my attention from @stakeholders (the ones that reach my inbox, daily). Fortunately, the epic crises I feared most are not a daily occurrence for most leaders, but balancing day-to-day operations, supporting and checking in with teammates, and creating time and space for innovation will feel like insurmountable barriers on many of our days at work. This is where this week's Leader Launchpad superpower comes in... becoming a master of systems and automation.

Understanding what CAN and SHOULD be automated

As a leader, mental space is the most fleeting of luxuries. With my door almost always open, that space is usually shared with teammates who are trying to get feedback on projects or run through an especially tough student/alumni appointment for some outside insights. It’s one of the most fun and exciting parts of my job, but often prevents me from gaining momentum on large-scale projects that I need to accomplish… or whittling down that pesky inbox. Some things we can automate, some things we cannot. Understanding the difference between these is the first step in creating a system by which you can free up time and mental space for yourself as a leader. To recognize what you should automate, think about your primary purpose(s) at your organization, which I will call “target tasks.” These are the tasks that you were hired for, and that are not (or cannot be duplicated by others on your team). As an executive director in career development, my primary target tasks include people leadership, creating and driving strategy and innovation, managing the organizational budget, and building relationships with internal and external stakeholders. These are the things that I would never attempt to fully automate. By contrast, systematizing my inbox and task/calendar management has alleviated stress, assisted with prioritization, and positively influenced adjacent, related areas.

Manage the most unwieldy inbox with the 3-21-0 method

Once I became a leader, my inbox quickly became one of the largest sources of stress and anxiety in my life. This may sound odd to you, but I did a ton of mental prepping for crises, conflict, and the hairier problems that leaders face, what I did not account for is the fact that as your title increases, the number of emails you receive each day does along with it. I quickly was staring down (over) 500 to 1,000 emails every time I opened my inbox, and this whittled away at my sense of well-being while at my desk. As much as I tried to clear it, those random meetings popped up, and I began to feel like Sisyphus clicking delete and send only to be rolled over several times each day. I learned about the 3-21-0 method from Ben Meer , whose newsletter, System Sunday, has been a godsend for my workplace wellbeing, and has inspired several things that I have implemented in my life!?

The premise of this method is simple: be vigilant with blocking 21 minutes, 3 times a day to clear your inbox to 0 emails. The beauty of this system is that the more you practice it, the more it reinforces itself. The other beauty of this system is that I do not keep my email open when I am not checking it, which allows me to get deeper work done and not be distracted (derailed) by the dings and flashes of new messages, which (after doing a few days worth of research for this article) averages about one every 3 to 5 minutes. As with other methods that you are trying to implement, don’t throw away your progress if you lapse back into old ways! Instead, recommit yourself to the system and watch your stress levels go down over time!

Lean into your calendar, and lean away from to-do lists

Okay, this will be the one area of contention in this newsletter, because so many people LOVE their to-do lists! On my team, I’m the only person who doesn’t prefer to operate from a list, but that doesn’t mean I am allowed to let things fall by the wayside. My alternative is time-blocking my calendar. Instead of creating a to-do list, which (to me) always feels like a moving, growing target that adds to my anxiety, I block time on my calendar for each task. This helps me to protect my time, and it also helps me to plan out my day to the best of my ability. Time blocking helps signal to my staff that I am working on something, and if my door is closed, it’s something that is likely a significant priority for our team. The best way to get started with this strategy is instead of writing a to-do item, put space on your calendar, for the required amount of time it should take. Don’t just block 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour for everything. Be conscious of how long a task should take, or how much time and energy you can give a task. Then, identify when you work best, and when you are least effective, and schedule your tasks accordingly. For me, I put the tasks that require the most concentration and mental energy as early in the day as possible. If I can accomplish a task with less focus I will put it later in the day (when I’m most depleted).

Bonus Tip: Scheduling "Random" Hallway Check-ins

The last thing I’ll note is that if you block 21 minutes on your calendar, it is highly unlikely that you’ll see anyone start a meeting at 21 minutes past the hour, and since I’ve closed my email, I have 9 minutes (or more) to randomly check in with my colleagues. One strategy I learned as a pre-service elementary school teacher was the value of walking around the classroom and physically being close to students. As a division leader, I failed (early on) in understanding that there is a power in having the “boss’s” eyes on you, and your work (in a positive way). I’m sure that sounds conceited (it does to me), but when I think about teammates who are motivated by recognition, simply walking around and noting that you like or appreciate something that they’re doing for the team goes quite far with their feelings of satisfaction and enthusiasm at work.

In the end, edicts will still rain down from above, and the phones will ring with a happy or unhappy [insert stakeholders here] on the other end. As a leader, you will often feel that your time is not yours, but rather it belongs to your programs, your team, and any loud voice who calls dibs on it. To keep your priorities moving, you'll need every single minute you can have freed up. I hope these systems can help you reclaim minutes (nay, hours) back in your day or week, and the feeling of control in (at least small areas of) your professional life.