Stop Saying Yes to Mr. No Good by Karlicia Lewis

This pattern can convert even the most talented individual leader into a mediocre performer who stays busy, but not productive.

Meetings end without resolution discussions start and then stop without clear next steps work is plagued by mistakes miscommunications need to be clarified and issues weigh on your mind because they are always partially addressed, but never fully resolved. You’ve entered a world of perpetually unfinished business. The fatigue from starting, switching, and then restarting produces more errors and further erodes the capacity you have. Setting aside complex problems to deal with later only compounds your sense of falling further behind. Managing both new and previously unfinished work requires you to spin your wheels even faster. This leads to hurried conversations, truncated meetings, rushed deliverables, and impulsively written emails. With so many urgent fires to put out, you end up moving from one piece of unfinished business to the next without resolution. You simply do not have the resources, either within the organization or yourself, to handle the existing demand. However, when the gap between the demands you face and the resources you have available to meet them widens to the breaking point, a phenomenon that I call “the manager’s dilemma” takes hold. You cannot manage people, projects, or priorities without it.

Recently, I wrote that the most overlooked factor in effective leadership is capacity: the time, attention, and energy that you, as an individual leader, can give.

Stop Saying Yes to Mr. No Good by Karlicia Lewis