The Plan is Launched. Now the Real Leadership Begins.
"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work." – Peter Drucker
September has a way of competing for a leader’s attention. The new academic year is underway. Goals have been set. Workplans are taking shape. Priorities seem clear. Then the calendar takes over.
Meetings multiply. Email piles up. A faculty issue needs attention. A student concern surfaces. Someone needs a decision today. By Friday, you’ve worked hard all week but the work you said mattered most hasn’t moved very far (and you’re exhausted).
We often call this a time-management problem. Sometimes it is but that may be the smoke. The real fire (or issue) could be something deeper at work: an attention-management problem.
Key Idea: A plan creates direction, but attention creates movement. Once implementation begins, leaders must deliberately protect attention for consequential work or urgent demands will quietly consume it.
Here are three strategies to help turn your priorities into next-level progress and results.
1. Identify: What Really Deserves Your Attention?
Key Idea: Not all work creates equal value. Brian Tracy’s familiar Eat That Frog concept encourages us to tackle the important, challenging work we are most likely to postpone. For leaders, the first challenge is deciding which “frog” actually deserves attention first.
Consequential leadership work is rarely the loudest work. Developing a faculty member, preparing for a difficult conversation, advancing an important initiative, or solving a persistent organizational problem may never arrive marked URGENT.
I’ve written before about the important of making focus a leadership discipline in [Is Focus Your Leadership Superpower?] But knowing what deserves our focus is only part of the challenge. We also have to protect enough attention to move it forward. This is precisely why consequential work is so easy to postpone.
Try This:
Identify your three most important leadership priorities right now.
Ask: “Which one needs meaningful movement this week?”
Identify one consequential task that deserves your best attention not simply the task demanding it first.
Example:
A department chair identifies strengthening faculty mentoring as a major priority for the year. Three weeks into the semester, meetings and operational issues have consumed nearly every available hour. The priority hasn’t changed. It simply hasn’t received enough attention to move.
2. Protect: Give Important Work a Place to Happen
Key Idea: Knowing what matters isn’t enough. Important work needs both protected time and protected attention. Researcher Sophie Leroy uses the term attention residue to describe what can happen when we switch tasks. Part of our attention remains with he work we just left. For leaders moving constantly between email, meetings, projects, and problems, that fragmentation can make complex work harder.
Try This:
Protect a specific block of time for one consequential priority.
Close email and messaging when the work requires concentrated thought.
Before switching tasks, ask: “Does this really need my attention right now?”
Example:
An associate dean protects an hour to work on an enrollment strategy but continues responding to email notifications throughout the session. The time is technically protected. Her attention isn’t. Silencing the notifications gives the important work a better chance to move forward.
3. Audit: Does Your Calendar Match Your Priorities?
Key Idea: Your calendar tells a leadership story. It provides visible evidence of where your attention is actually going, not simply where you intended it to go. Leadership requires responsiveness. Meetings matter. Faculty need support. Problems emerge. Decisions sometimes can’t wait. The goal isn’t to eliminate the urgent. It is to make sure consequential work doesn’t survive only on whatever attention is left over.
Try This: Conduct an Attention Audit (Take 10 minutes)
Name your 3 most important leadership priorities.
Review the next 7 days on your calendar.
Identify where those priorities have protected attention.
Notice what is consuming attention without advancing them.
Protect 1 period of focused attention for the most consequential work.
Ask: “If someone saw only my calendar and never my plan, what would they conclude my priorities are?”
Example:
A college leadership team identifies student success, faculty development, and enrollment as its major priorities. Yet a review of their calendars reveals almost no protected attention devoted to advancing them. The issue isn’t whether the priorities are important. It’s whether leadership behavior reflects their importance.
Final Thoughts:
Our plans communicate what we intent to prioritize. Our calendars provide evidence of what we actually prioritize. The urgent will always compete for attention. Meetings will happen. Problems will emerge. The goals isn’t to ignore them. It’s to make sure they don’t quietly become your strategy. Once the plan is launched, protecting attention for what matters most is where leadership begins.
Next Steps to Strengthen Your Leadership:
Are daily demands making it difficult to move your most important priorities forward? EduLead-Rx works with academic pharmacy leaders to clarify priorities, strengthen leadership effectiveness, and translate intention into meaningful action. For more information contact me info@eduleadrx.com or schedule time to talk at edulead.as.me
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