Try a 30-Minute Exercise to Kick-Start your Thinking.

Sometimes just getting started is the hardest part.

Especially these days—when working from home means that the intersecting, urgent obligations seem to crowd out that all-important, but non-urgent, time to just simply think.

For those of you who are struggling to focus and get some organizational thinking started, here is a 30-minute exercise to try that will get the juices flowing, and get your strategic thinking started.

I first published this on LinkedIn. If you’d like my help with this exercise, please get in touch.

Exercise: If you need to think about your own future

This exercise is for those of you struggling to focus and get some organizational thinking done. Stop mindlessly scanning job ads. Instead, why not ready your organization for your safe departure? It’ll free up your own thinking, and you’ll be better able to make choices for your own career or next steps in life.

Take a piece of paper and answer the following:

• Who is the person that would step up and fill my role in the short term due to an emergency?

• Does this person know I think they will be filling this role? Does anyone else know?

• What do they need (training, supports) to be ready should the need arise?

• Longer term, is there an up to date job description for my role? Does the organization have a succession plan for its leadership? Has the Board discussed its plans to ensure a stable transition to a new leader, and its approach to recruitment?

Congratulations! You’ve just started some thinking on which you can begin to build a leadership succession plan.

If you’d like my coaching help to push this exercise into a fully-realized plan, please get in touch.