Every time I contemplate whether or not I need to be involved in solving a problem at the office, I ask myself "if I step in, am I crippling the capacity of my team to handle this without me?"
I used to take ownership of absolutely everything that I could have a positive impact on, but now I really focus on how inefficient that is and how the more critical I am to the function of the office, the more vulnerable the system is to my loss.
"Not my problem" for me is not about caring less, it's about caring *more* about the effectiveness of the systems in place and whether or not they need to change. I shouldn't need to be involved beyond my main responsibilities, anything that takes me away from those is an inefficiency in the system that should be resolved.
Okay, I found this from the "best posts" and it's amazing.
Now I just need to stop getting pulled into everything, because I can fix everything.
These days, I'm turning into a marriage counselor. Or...Director counselor.
Look guys, you work for the same VP. Why don't you go talk to him if you want to know who should be doing what??
Wow...
I never expected this particular post to get so much traction, but if I'm honest with myself about how I used to think when I was a workaholic, yeah, this kind of post would have been a bit of a "oh shit...right" kind of message for me back then.
I used to be all about taking on as much as possible, being as useful as possible, it was ALL about proving myself.
Now, I'm Director of Operations, I'm in charge of pretty much everything, literally EVERYTHING is in some way my responsibility, and yet, I'm only there twice a week, and I rarely answer emails on my off days unless I have to. If I'm urgently needed, I've probably failed in some way.
I know there's a problem when my staff are too happy to see me when I come into the office, that's when I know that something has gone a little off the rails. On a day to day basis, no one should care if I'm there.
It's been such a mindfuck going from trying to be as indispensable as possible to trying to make myself obsolete. The crazy thing is that the more I try to eliminate my own value, the more valuable I become. It's funny how that works.