Most leaders tell me they want more time to think. More time to look ahead. More time to work on the business rather than spending every day responding to whatever lands in front of them next.
Then you look at their diary and the contradiction becomes obvious.
The week is packed with client calls, project reviews, leadership meetings, catch-ups, updates and conversations that all seemed entirely reasonable when they were booked. Individually, none of them look particularly problematic. Collectively, they leave very little space for the work leaders say matters most.
If you’d prefer to listen, this topic is also explored in the episode Why You Say “I’m in back to back meetings” every day of the How to Lead podcast.
The challenge is that meetings create a very convincing sense of productivity. Everyone is engaged, information is moving, decisions appear to be progressing and the diary is full. It feels active.
Yet many leaders finish the day with the uncomfortable sense that, despite being busy from start to finish, they haven't really moved anything important forward.
Exhausted, certainly. Clearer about the future? Less so.
Much of the day is spent consuming information rather than thinking about it. Listening, reviewing, responding, clarifying, approving and reacting, often without a meaningful pause between one demand and the next.
By the time the operational noise settles down, usually somewhere around six o'clock, the work that genuinely requires leadership attention is still waiting. The bigger decisions. The longer-term thinking. The questions nobody else can answer.
Unfortunately, that's also the point where energy is at its lowest.
I was speaking to a founder recently who kept telling me she needed more time to work on the business. The business was growing, the team was expanding and there were some significant commercial decisions sitting on the horizon.
Then we looked at her diary.
What she actually had was a week almost entirely devoted to staying close to the operation:
Client calls.
Project reviews.
Delivery discussions.
Problem-solving conversations.
The issue wasn't a lack of time. The issue was where her time was going.
She was spending most of her week involved in the running of the business, leaving very little space to lead where it was heading.
Many leaders recognise this when they see it written down.
You tell yourself you're staying connected. Keeping standards high. Supporting the team. Then a few months pass and you realise you've attended almost every discussion, approved almost every decision and somehow become the route through which everything flows.
A classic Linda move, although she'd describe it as "being helpful".
There comes a point where your value no longer comes from being present in every conversation. It comes from seeing things that other people cannot easily see because they are too close to the detail.
Spotting patterns before they become problems, noticing risks while there is still time to respond, recognising when priorities are drifting, and making thoughtful decisions rather than rushed reactive ones.
That requires something many leaders have accidentally removed from their diary.
Space.
This is also where the conversation becomes slightly more uncomfortable.
Being needed can feel good.
There is something reassuring about people wanting your opinion, looking for your approval and asking you to join the discussion. Most leaders would never consciously create dependency, but it is remarkably easy to become accustomed to being at the centre of things.
Then one day you realise your calendar is completely full, your head feels permanently busy and you're wondering why strategic thinking always seems to happen after hours, when you're already tired.
This is why I think diary management is often treated as a productivity problem when it is really a leadership question.
The issue isn't whether you have the right app, a better notebook or a more sophisticated colour-coding system. The more important question is whether your role has evolved alongside the business itself.
Many leaders are still attending meetings, making decisions and staying involved in work that belonged to an earlier version of the organisation. The business has grown, but their diary hasn't evolved with it.
And eventually that gap starts creating pressure.
The irony is that thinking time rarely feels productive in the moment. Nobody can see you joining dots, spotting risks or challenging assumptions. There is no meeting invitation attached to it. No visible output by lunchtime. Which makes it easy to fill the space with something else.
But creating room to think isn't what happens once the important work is finished. For leaders, it is part of the important work.
Not the reward you get once the operational work is finished.
The work itself.
Businesses rarely lose direction because leaders stop caring. More often, leaders become so immersed in delivery that they lose sight of where delivery is heading.
Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is decline the meeting.
The discussion still happens. The issue still gets managed. The decision still gets made.
Just not by you. That can feel uncomfortable, particularly if you've spent years being the person people rely on. But leadership evolves. There comes a point where your contribution is less about attending every discussion and more about creating the conditions for others to handle them well.
It's creating enough room to lift your head up and see the bigger picture again.
If this feels familiar, and you'd like to spend less time reacting and more time focusing on the bigger picture, that's exactly the kind of work we explore inside the Leadership Accelerator Programme.
You’ll find details of that, alongside my coaching, podcast and leadership resources, at waterfallhill.co.uk.
