Senior managers and executives working in organizations with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people scattered across specialty divisions (silos), or geographic areas, sometimes find that they miss the satisfactions of their early careers – the hands on work of supervision and management.
This is one of the realities of “moving up”.
Perhaps “walk around management” is no longer possible. Or maybe the figurative “open door” has been closed by the constant pressure of an overfilled calendar. There could be a vague feeling of uncertainty about what is going on in the layers of the organization below the c-suite (vertical fragmentation) or across departmental silos (horizontal fragmentation).
The cumulative pressures of leadership are often experienced as stressful.
Senior managers and executives face many workplace stressors. No surprises there. However, there is an aspect of these sometimes all-consuming roles that does not receive much, if any, attention. It is an aspect more transformational than all of the stressors mentioned above – time horizons.
Completing projects with short time frames is fulfilling because they can be “checked off the list”. For example, mowing the lawn becomes desirable because it is conceived, executed, and completed nearly in the moment – right now. For the same reason, playing computer games with instant feedback can become addictive.
But what if you almost never checked your projects off the list?
Senior level managers and executives often work on projects and change efforts that span many months, if not years. For example, constructing a new office building or production plant does not happen overnight. But, even routine tasks such as designing new products, distribution channels, or work processes may have time horizons that stretch so far into the future those leading these efforts may not be able to see over the horizon to know or feel when completion is at hand. This is a high order stressor that is too often unacknowledged or underappreciated.
Coping with this out of awareness, but ever present, sense of a distant time horizon begins with knowing it is there. In other words, recognizing that when a project has a long time horizon it will often seem as if you are always getting halfway there, and halfway there, and halfway there – never arriving at the finish line.
So, stop and remember your projects and their timelines. Can you see the finish line? And, if not, can you accept that this is the reality of the timeline, but also a form of stress? What will it take for you to get in touch with the experience of never feeling as gratified at work as you do when mowing the lawn or moving up to that next level in a computer game?
There are no easy answers in terms of shortening time horizons, but being aware that long time horizons are a form of stress is important. One must acknowledge that promotions, transfers, and changes in employment deprive us of reaching a gratifying end to the creative and adventurous projects that we begin. The end can only be envisioned in fantasy.
The time horizon of your work should be given some reflection. Have your unfinished projects become an unacknowledged stressor in your life?
They did for me.
