When you get to my status in a company (you won’t!), your job is all about email and meetings. Departments such as Production and Customer Service and Sales stand aside to how much overhead it costs to pay my salary to check email and drink coffee in office chairs all day.
And if I bring my work to the conference room, I don’t have to move all day!
Thanks to email and meetings, I can avoid going out to the production area for weeks at a time. It’s a good thing, too, because it’s dirty, hot, stinky, and loud out there. I’m not sure what they are doing, but it’s definitely not work.
Plus, there is always a stack of hard work to be done in both my inbox and the conference room. And this is dangerous, thankless work!
In case you are ignorant, let me remind you of the traumatic risks of administrative work:
- Carpal tunnel
- High blood pressure
- Some chairs are uncomfortable and don’t have armrests
- Catered lunches can be quite fattening
- The sun is so blinding through the top floor’s windows I have to bring sunglasses to meetings. (Aviators, obviously.)
While many of underlings waste their time sweating, lifting, assembling, calling, repairing, and serving customers, we leaders are up here getting the real work done. I checked more than 400 emails just today!
Administratively,
W. Albert Jameson, IV
Emails and meetings are necessary, and compliment work, but they do not replace for the work itself. Emails cannot compare to attentive conversations with team members assembling your products. Meetings are only useful if they are intentional and have a clear agenda. Don’t assume merely doing these activities makes you productive!
Leading well demands involvement. It requires active confrontation of problems and engaging in meaningful relationships. Connect with your team members, who enable to do what you love, and do not to forget what it is like to get your hands dirty!
-Andrew