More of a running a business question, but how much of your time do you spend executing vs. being in meetings, conferences etc?
(I’m used to being an executor and now my job seems to be meeting with people and managing)
Great question.
It depends how big your company is. Once you’ve got 7 or so direct reports, management basically becomes your full-time job. Depending on your management style, that can mean a lot of meetings.
I spend most of my time being in meetings and stuff, but I still end up doing a lot of operational stuff in between. I’m still executing, but it requires me to be really clear about which meetings I’m not taking (any with people I don’t know, or where the meeting doesn’t directly contribute to our 2–3 strategic goals right now) and also it sometimes gets pushed into the evenings or the weekend.
Certainly as someone who used to be all execution, the change can feel really frustrating. It’s like going from 90% execution and 10% overhead to 90% overhead and 10% execution. But the secret is making the management stuff feel like execution. Because it is. It just doesn’t feel that way most of the time.
Resources to check out:
- Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule by Paul Graham
- High Output Management by Andy Grove
Founder Friday Series
This post is part of a series of short, candid, quick videos and essays on entrepreneurship and starting your own businsess– I call it Founder Friday.
If you want to see more of these, leave a comment and let me know that you like it.
