Your most important team is...?

If you work with several teams, ask yourself, what team is your top priority? You may have an idea which pops to mind. Pause on that, perhaps write it down.

This is a 2.5 min video (yep, it's really short, watch it), that asks exactly that question:

Now re-consider your first answer. Interesting, right? Is your answer still the same? The real question is: What are you going to do with this information/insight?

This video made me consider if my investment of time aligns with priorities. I agree with the video, my peer group (in my case, other senior leaders) is my most important team, but am I investing the time and attention into that team correctly, or are other groups taking more of my time?

So I checked and was surprised by the results.

I looked back over the first 2 weeks of October (I track my days in Outlook and LogSeq), and counted in 30 minute chunks where I was spending my time.

It broke down, broadly, like this:

• 40% not in meetings! (This was higher than I expected, and higher than it feels like most weeks! No Meeting Friday really helps!)
• 20% in meetings with the wider business
• 20% (an average of 5% x 4) in meetings with direct reports/teams they are on.
• 10% in meetings with the wider tech org and non managed teams
• 10% with my cross-functional peers (this is my #1 team)

Which lead me to ask myself:

• Are these percentages what's best for the business?
• Are these percentages what I want?
• Do I really have 40% of my time not in meetings?

How do your numbers stack up? Have you ever checked?

Almost regardless of what the actual percentages are, having the data and asking the questions, is giving you an opportunity to have interesting discussions with the people you work with and calibrate how you are spending your time - which feels like it can only be a good thing.