Why Senior Teams Get Bogged Down in the Wrong Work, According to Leanne Bridges

In a recent LinkedIn post, Leanne Bridges highlights a common yet often overlooked challenge faced by growing businesses: senior teams spending significant time on tasks that should be handled by junior staff. Bridges uses the example of a managing director (MD) of a 50-person engineering firm to illustrate how a lack of clear role definition can lead to inefficiency and frustration at the leadership level.

The Impact of Unclear Role Boundaries

Bridges explains that the MD discovered approximately 40% of his senior team’s time was being consumed by work that fell below their pay grade. This wasn’t due to a lack of capability but rather an absence of explicit boundaries between different levels of responsibility. As Leanne Bridges notes in her post:

“Not because his managers were incapable. Because nobody had drawn a clear line between ‘your work’ and ‘their work.'”

This ambiguity, Bridges argues, led senior team members to default to a ‘doing’ mentality. They would pick up tasks that had become problematic, attend meetings where their presence wasn’t essential, and resolve financial or administrative issues that had slipped through the cracks. This pattern, according to Bridges, prevents senior leaders from focusing on activities that genuinely drive business growth and profitability.

The Illusion of Busyness

The post points out a critical distinction between being busy and being effective. The MD’s initial reaction was to consider hiring more staff, believing he lacked the right people. However, Bridges reveals the issue was not a shortage of personnel but a misalignment of responsibilities.

Leanne Bridges emphasizes that the problem is often difficult to identify from within the organization because everyone appears to be engaged in work.

“This is one of the hardest things to spot when you’re inside it. Because everyone looks busy. Everyone is busy. But busy doing what?”

This pervasive sense of busyness can mask underlying inefficiencies. According to Leanne Bridges, the longer this situation persists, the more senior employees normalize it. What was once the ‘wrong work’ becomes ingrained in the company culture, making it progressively harder to rectify.

Bridging the Gap: Clarity Over Hiring

Bridges suggests that the solution lies not in additional hiring, but in clearer communication and role definition. While the MD had communicated his desired focus areas and defined roles, his conversations were not specific enough to alter daily actions. Consequently, senior staff continued to gravitate towards familiar, ‘safe’ tasks.

As Leanne Bridges observes:

“The MD had told them what he wanted them to focus on. He’d been clear about what their role was. But the conversations he was having weren’t specific enough to change what they actually did day to day.”

This disconnect between stated goals and daily execution is a significant barrier to growth, as highlighted by Bridges. The frustration for the MD, and likely for many leaders in similar situations, stems from seeing valuable senior talent occupied with tasks that do not contribute to strategic objectives.

The Normalization of Inefficiency

Leanne Bridges warns that the normalization of this inefficient workflow is a key risk. When senior team members consistently handle lower-level tasks, it becomes the accepted norm. This can stifle initiative and prevent the development of talent at lower levels, as they may not be given opportunities to take ownership.

In Leanne Bridges’s view, addressing this requires more than just general directives; it necessitates granular, actionable clarity that reshapes daily behaviors and ensures senior leaders are empowered to focus on high-impact activities that propel the business forward.