Let go of your current work and train your successor.
I was chatting with a CTO last week who shared this piece of management advice. His perspective was that while his job was interesting now, he didn’t want to do it forever. He had already identified the person on his team that could succeed him, and was starting to give her opportunities to build the skills she needed.
This is a counterintuitive strategy for many people. They feel that if they teach others to do their work, they won’t have any value to the company, and they’ll be out of a job. It’s a scarcity zero-sum mindset, believing that there’s a finite amount of work to do, so if somebody else does your work, that leaves less for you to do.
But one of my mentors (and managers) reframed it for me: “Eric, I want to take on bigger jobs with more scope, and for me to do that, I need you to step up and do the work I’m doing today.” He had the confidence to let go of what he was currently doing so he had the opportunity to advance to his next level. This is an abundance non-zero-sum mindset, believing that there’s always more to do and learn.
The other way I frame it is that if you’re great at your work, that’s great for your organization but your capacity becomes a bottleneck for that type of work. The organization benefits so much more if you can coach others to do that work; instead of having just one of you, they will then have 5 or 10 or 20 people capable of doing work at that level.
How are you thinking about letting go of your current work (that you’re excellent at and got you to where you are) so that you can give yourself the opportunity to level up in what’s next?