I just read a great article by Will Larson on “Moving from an orchestration-heavy to leadership-heavy management role.”

My “aha” moment: so many leaders lack the ability to do all six of the steps:

• Problem Discovery
• Problem Selection
• Solution Discovery
• Solution Selection
• Execution
• Ongoing Revision

Most get stuck focusing only on orchestration — the last three steps — missing the critical upfront leadership work.

This raises two crucial questions: Would you even know if you lacked those skills, or are they an invisible gap? And perhaps more importantly, would others in your organization notice? The article suggests that what feels like “business as usual” to an orchestration-heavy manager actually signals a struggle to everyone else.

How can you tell if you are falling into this anti-pattern? To quote Will, a focus “on prioritization as “solution of first resort.” When you’re not allowed to change the problem or the approach, prioritization becomes one of the best tools you have…”

This “prioritize our way out of trouble” approach is just one signal, but a strong one.

If you grew up in an environment where these core leadership responsibilities were always handled by someone else, how do you learn to develop that leadership “muscle” to run the full core loop?

Read the full article here: https://lethain.com/orchestration-heavy-leadership-heavy/