I provide context and share what I know

When you provide context, you’re explaining how to interpret a raw piece of data. It’s walking through why something is happening, or how it happened, or what’s coming next — why not all three? There are lots of opportunities to provide it outside of explaining stats on a dashboard. These are some of our favorites.

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Knowing how without knowing why

If I don’t have a good grasp on the why of what I’m doing, I need to be told a lot of things at every step: how to adapt to new inputs and circumstances, if my output is any good. I don’t have the tools to adapt on my own or to judge my own work. All of that becomes someone else’s work, which is an exhausting burden.

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Know your numbers

Knowing your numbers means you can make decisions very easily. The numbers turn questions into answerable math problems, so when you ask the CEO of your company to add hundreds of thousands of dollars of overhead to his company, you can do it with unadulterated confidence. You have numbers to back it up: Tripled output! 5X revenue! In the next 12 months! This is a real example!

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Delegate responsibly

You already have a list of tasks you know you shouldn’t be spending your time on. (If you don’t, start by figuring those out.) What do you need to add to make each one meaningful? Try looking one or two ladder rungs above the task to find the larger result it’s supporting. That’s where the ownership is, and that’s what you should be delegating. Here’s how.

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My team is better than me

When we release ourselves from the expectation of being the best at what we’re managing, we free up so much room, both for ourselves and for the people who shine on our teams. If we’re not trying to produce great work, we can spend more time noticing the great work they do.

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