The Three Things I Focused On

At my previous job, I had a wonderful working relationship with a wonderful boss.  We were quite a one-two combination.  As I have had some time away from this work experience, I have reflected often on the things I've learned.  One of the things my boss told me early on in my time there was that as the leader of the organization, she had three things to focus on: casting the vision, funding the vision, and staffing the vision.  And so for all the big and small responsibilities that go along with being the executive director of a non-profit organization is complex as ours, those three were the ones she tried to not lose sight of.

 

It got me thinking: as her #2, what did I focus on?  Some days, looking back, I felt I had no focus – constantly flitting from one responsibility to another, only to be interrupted by one fire or another.  But I think I can say with some truth that I had some focus, too.  I feel like all of my actions circled around a few main goals, as well:

 

Translate the vision.  One of my most important roles was to translate my boss' vision to the rest of the staff, so that the clarity she saw they saw, and the energy she had they would have.

 

Define, measure, and evaluate the jobs required to fulfill the vision.  Here is the quintessential leader/manager dichotomy: the leader sets the vision, and the manager makes it happen.  Of course, it is rare that the roles are split so cleanly, and in fact there was a lot of overlap with me and my boss.  But I do feel I spent a fair amount of time in implementation and control.

 

Equip people to do the jobs required to fulfill the vision.  From offering emotional support to clarifying the tasks to providing the resources, this was another major burden I sought to carry as I floated around my various tasks and responsibilities. 

 

It will be interesting to see these main buckets of responsibilities in different work settings.  I certainly had a blast seeing them play out in my last one.