Fire Yourself
The best way to reinvigorate your job is to fire yourself.
We have all been stuck in the rut that feels like an eternity. You get to the office 5 minutes late, wipe the sleep out of your eyes, and plop down at your desk. Staring at your computer for too long, you decide to finally unlock it to get the day started. When you sign in, you’re greeted with the unmistakable familiarity of annoyance. You can’t believe your boss is already on your case about a deadline three weeks away. You write the email that says, “I quit.” You then backspace it quickly. Days turn to weeks; weeks to months. Eventually, you wonder how you got to this point. Didn’t you work hard enough? Doesn’t your boss see your worth?
The Rut of Innovation
As the President & CEO of The Penn Group, I have had my fair share of frustrating days in the office. Within organizations big and small, survival of the fittest seems to reign. Within larger organizations, the management team is often filled with people who simply outworked everyone else. There is never a clear line between who is capable to lead and who is in the position because they worked for it. These are symptoms of what I call the “rut of innovation”.
The Rut of Innovation is a phenomenon whereby, within an organization the culture, structure and management create disillusionment, disengagement, and dissension among the team, leading to a brain drain.
Once top talent leaves, the organization struggles to maintain efficiency, order, and stagnates. There are two causes to the Rut of Innovation.
1) The management team becomes stretched too thin, with a focus on managing targets, deadlines and politics.
2) Employees are underutilized, under-challenged, and under deliver, which causes disillusionment with the organization, resulting in top talent leaving.
Fire Yourself
For the management team, instead of focusing on targets, deadlines, and politics, focus on leading and serving your team. Look at your team as a collection of 30–40 individual leaders who could accomplish so much more if they were empowered to do so. Secondly, develop your team by way of teaching the why behind your thinking, not just the what. As a manager, your job is to create 10–15 people who could replace you.
You should fire yourself.
Firing yourself opens the opportunity for you to approach your management of your team differently. If you think about managing your team without your involvement, your priorities shift from execution to development. From drowning to swimming. Your team must be enabled, empowered, and aligned to operate without your involvement in the event of your absence.
For the non-manager, your best chance to move up is to replace yourself.
If you’re the only one who can do your job, then you’re the only person who ever will. Your strategy should be to lead as if you were the manager. When was the last time you had a conversation with your boss about the strategic direction of the team? If you want the management job, you have to think like the manager. If you want what no one else has, you have to do what no one else will.
Austin Harman is the President & CEO of The Penn Group. He currently holds the coveted CISSP certification, in conjunction with the CCSP, CAP, and Security+ certifications from ISC2 and CompTIA respectively. He resides in Columbus, Ohio.
