Barbarians At The Inbox

I was having a coaching conversation the other day with an exceptionally high performer. As you could imagine, this person takes great pride in working long hours and getting plenty of stuff done. After a while, I asked my client to tell me how much value they’ve provided for their organization. They started to go back into the volume of email requests they receive and their list of action items when I stopped them again: “how much value have these activities provided for your organization?”

I don’t believe that everything that is important can be measured, however, we should be able to measure the value of some of this activity. In too many situations, we have substituted busyness for value creation. We feel that every request that lands in our inbox is validation that we are valuable and that we, and only we, have the ability to deliver on these tasks. Sometimes we skip asking ourselves “are these the right tasks to be delivered on?”

It’s easier to decide which tasks we should deliver on if we understand how our role is connected to our organization’s financial outcomes. What are the key parts of our role that deliver our organization the most value? Can that work be 60% of our time as opposed to 40% of our time? It’s true that we sometimes have to just do what we’re told, but we usually have the opportunity to give input on our work product. Especially if we have demonstrated that we will put forth significant effort for the organization.

We all need time and space to think. We need the opportunity to be thoughtful about our work and why we inhabit the role we do in our organizations. Let’s determine the highest and best use of our time, then dedicate more time in that direction. There will always be barbarians at our inbox ready to overrun us. We need to find more time each day to hold them at bay.