“But what exactly is the problem?” the Minister asked, exasperated. Thankfully my collegue knew, she stepped in and answered, and we agreed on what we would do next. Phew. Saved. But only just. And I knew I didn’t want to be in this situation again.
I was used to working with Ministers, to answering their questions and being honest when giving them hard messages they didn’t want to hear. I was even comfortable with saying I didn’t know something and would have to check – that was far better than ‘winging it’ and then having to correct yourself once you’d looked into the data or legislation. But that’s generally easier to do when you’re talking about strategy and policy. When it comes to delivery, you need to know the detail – what progress have we made? What’s off track, where and why? And what are we doing about it? No more generalisations or ‘I’ll look into it’. Answers were needed immediately, and they needed to be right.
I was thrown in at the deep end of this in one of my first delivery roles as a Senior Civil Servant. I was suddenly responsible for hundreds of live cases that we reviewed on a weekly basis with the Minister. I needed to be on top of the detail like never before. And it wasn’t a simple set of metrics – each case involved complicated legal and financial steps and there seemed to be as many potential glitches as there were cases. To top it off, I didn’t really see myself as a ‘details person’. The big picture, that’s what I thought I loved.
Many of the leaders I work with go through this shock too, especially after big promotions. At last, they think, it’s time to take a step back, to rise above all that messy detail and focus on the strategy. But it rarely works out like that, probably because it was a false distinction in the first place.
So here are some reflections on leadership and getting into the detail:
🚫Don’t reject detail because you think it’s not your job anymore. A wise Mentor once said to me leadership is like being a diver who can (and should) submerge to the depths of the ocean when needed. The art of leadership is knowing when you need to go down and how to do so safely. Yes, you need to scan the horizon, but you also need to know and understand the landscape beneath the surface. And I don’t just mean scanning for iceberg threats, there are beautiful reefs down there too.
🤿Understand that your team will need you down in those depths sometimes. Getting into the detail with your team has lots of benefits, not just bringing your skill and experience to bear on the problems or increasing your awareness of what’s really going on. Gaining their trust and respect in part depends on them feeling that you are really by their side, accompanying them on the day-to-day challenges of getting the job done. If the people you manage feel like you skim happily along the surface without understanding or empathising with their reality you are unlikely to engage or inspire them.
🧐Learn it. Some of this is about rolling your sleeves up and putting in the work. Yes, you have a bigger job now and yes it’s daunting how much you’re responsible for and are supposed to understand. But don’t give up. Prioritise the detail that matters most and get stuck in. In that delivery job I started carrying around a list of every case that we were responsible for. I booked in time to go through it before every meeting with the Minister. I doubt I every really knew it by heart – I know it was a bit like a security blanket – but my confidence grew as I acted my way into a new identity as someone who ‘did’ detail.
🌅Don’t stay there. This is the flip side of course. We hold on to the detail because stepping up scares us: the need to be an expert before making big decisions; the fear of being responsible for something that we don’t fully understand. If you don’t let go, you crowd out your team and never get back up the surface to set direction. So, keeping moving up and down, and if you’re not sure which way to go and when, try asking: would it help if we looked at the detail of this together? What role can I play that’s most useful to you now?
Over the years I came to see that detail was my friend – it was a source of strength and insight and without it we risked working only at the surface and not really making a difference.
When do you dive down?
