# Personal Altitudes Created On: 07-20-2023 02:02 pm Up:: [[The Leadership Library]] Tags:: #note/evergreen🌲 #note/public🌎 Topics:: [[Time Management]], [[Productivity MOC]] Related:: --- > [!note] Note > This novella was written for the Engineering Managers and Engineers of Ibotta, so there are likely "contextually bound" elements of this write up. # Introduction Have you ever said, “I didn’t have time for that”? Think about it… Yes, certainly, you have: I have, everyone has! The irony is that what we’re saying is misleading… We’re saying, “I didn’t make time," but we feel better soothing our ego by giving ourselves an escape hatch by chalking it up to being outside our control. This is, of course, untrue. The primary question is, where does that mindset leave us oriented? It orients us toward an everlasting reality of self-induced busyness, because, most busyness is self-induced… This isn’t one of those exceptions. The state of being busy has, oftentimes, less to do with the quantity and complexity of work swirling around you and more with a lack of awareness and intentionality of managing it effectively. While it’s easy to get swept up by an onslaught of work, we choose how to manage it, and oftentimes to our detriment, manage it highly ineffectively. Busyness will continue to dominate us until we recognize it as self-induced - something we control. We can achieve that through better time utilization. Good time utilization comes down to intentionality or deliberate and purposeful management of that limited and, arguably, the most critical human resource we have: time. Because we use time, it doesn’t use us. This novella aims to provide mental models and tools to align and enable the execution of the impact you’d like to personally have at various levels or “altitudes” within the organization, to “fly” there: enabling you to think through the utilization of your time management in ways that benefit not only you, but also others, and Ibotta more broadly. --- # The Problems: Time & Intentionality > You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. > > – [[James Clear]] Time is limited. It keeps going, and we’re simply dragged along by it. In the more modern concept of time utilization, we can think of time as boxes continuously moving down a conveyor belt in front of us. We put the artifacts of our actions (or inaction even) in those boxes and can liken that to what we choose to work on while those boxes are upon us. Consequently, time limits our productivity potential - only so many time boxes can be filled in a given day. Therefore, how you organize your responsibilities, goals, and routines to efficiently and consistently complete the tasks that matter most through these time boxes is productivity. As we know, productivity isn’t about getting everything done but the most important things done. The question becomes: how do we confidently elevate the most important and impactful work and accomplish that? We often set goals to mark what “ideal productivity” looks like - giving us a target or vision of what success is cast as. However, goals are often fairly meaningless on their own; they’re typically outcomes and not pathways to getting somewhere. Therefore, we must find systematic ways to generate productive behavior to help us achieve our goals. As the quote above says, “We fall to the level of our systems”. Those systems are the routines, models, mechanisms, and tools we deploy that meter progress toward our goals. Just as establishing a morning routine as a system for achieving your annual reading goal is more effective than otherwise saying, “I’ll read when reading opportunities present themselves”, let’s explore a system that breeds greater awareness and intentionality, which should help you achieve your professional goals and the impact you aspire for at various levels within the organization! --- # Solution: Altitudes Let’s talk about altitudes! Attitudes are a metaphor for thinking about our work at various organizational levels. And when we look at our goals or our desire to impact a given level within the organization, we associate those goals and work tasks with different levels within the organization's structure. When we think about most organization structures, we can see a vertical structure emerge: your team is in a group, which lives in a bigger group, which lives under the entire organization and beyond. This serves as a basis for where we can represent and deliver our impact across the organization. We “fly” at these altitudes, which is a representation of our work at that level. Day-in-day-out, whether in a meeting, writing on Slack, or working on a presentation or document, you’re flying! And you’re likely flying at various different altitudes, even intraday! And while the organization’s structure gives a base shape of those, your personal altitudes will depend on you and your role specifically, so let’s explore that! --- ## Discovering Your Altitudes The major demarcation between most altitudes primarily concerns the audience: who benefits from your work? A laddering of sorts happens in the audiences as you look into higher levels of the organization: your team is 5-10, but one layer up, it's 50 people, a layer above that, it’s 250! That’s a laddered change and a broader opportunity for impact! We’re looking for those changes, but we also want to keep it extremely balanced. The simpler, the better! This simplicity is demonstrated in my altitudes: |Altitude (From High to Low)|Impact|Example Work| |---|---|---| |Director Altitude|The engineering org - Impacts many members of numerous engineering groups, such as Platform, B2B, D2C, etc.|Engineering goal work, org-wide RFCs, tech-out sessions, talks, and presentations, such as EMU, and other “systematic” organizational work.| |Platform Altitude|Group org - Impacts many subgroups and squads within the Platform and group.|Rewards as a Service, domain maturity, talks, presentations to Platform engineers and engineering managers, etc.| |Group Altitude|Subgroup org - Uniquely impacts the subgroup and the three squads comprising the Purchases Platform: Platform Transactions, Product Graph, and Product Data Quality.|Any and all work that impacts the success of my subgroup: supporting and coaching my EMs and Staff+ engineers, building a great subgroup culture, developing strategy in partnership with Product and Architecture, etc. <br> <br>This also acts as my “baseline altitude”, which we’ll discuss next.| |Squad Altitude|Squad - The impact is primarily influential to one of the squads in the Purchases Platform Group, such as Product Graph.|This is any work associated with squads for me. Spending time in this is an anti-pattern of my role, as I should be spending time at a baseline layer and otherwise charging the EMs within my group to own this altitude with aligned autonomy.| For an Engineering Manager, their altitudes may look like this: - Engineering Organization - B2B/Platform/D2C Group - Your Subgroup - Your Squad - this one is more likely to be more enumerated than mine and is presumably a baseline - People Management - Technical Strategy - Etc. For Senior Engineers, their altitudes may look slightly different: - B2B/Platform/D2C Group - Your Subgroup - Your Squad - Initiative Lead - Epic Lead - Spike Lead - Task Execution In the end, the goal is to understand and represent the various altitudes associated with the type of work and the impact you’d like to have. Toy with this structure because it will likely be unique to you and can help visualize the narrative of the impact you aspire to have within the organization, which is really motivating due to its tangibility. ![[Personal Altitudes - Altitudes Filled.png]] *(Filled Example)* Once we know these altitudes, we must establish a baseline altitude to begin operating from! --- ## Establishing A Baseline Altitude We all need a baseline altitude to represent the foundational work we’re accountable for delivering as part of our role (I choose the term “accountable” over “responsible” intentionally 😉). This is typically very position-oriented: if you’re the EM of a particular squad, the “Squad” altitude will likely be your baseline. The beauty of the baseline altitude is that it helps us visualize and prompt three things: * Consistently challenge us to work one altitude above our baseline * For me, that is the Platform Group altitude * Find creative ways to redistribute work at our baseline altitude instead of always driving/doing * I work closely with the Engineering Managers of my subgroup to distribute work that collectively benefits our subgroup and its engineers. We’ll talk more about this later! * Effortlessly acknowledge that “driving and doing” below our baseline altitude is an anti-pattern of achieving our goals. If we’re working below our baseline, there’s a good chance we won’t achieve our goals. Therefore, similar to the above, we must be more intentional about distributing work to own this space with aligned autonomy, to “free yourself to fly higher”. Looking at my altitudes above, and applying this model, while I need to continue to deliver at my baseline altitude of the Purchases Platform Subgroup, my objective should be to work more at the “Platform” altitude and above, while significantly working less at the “Squad” altitude to the point where it is running on its own. Whenever I feel myself creating or seeing work mound in that “Squad” altitude layer, it is a red alert to find creative ways to redistribute that work to others to enable me to fly higher. For an EM who has traditionally owned or otherwise leaned heavily into the technical strategy for your squad, this awareness of one’s baseline altitude is a call to delegate or empower that to an SME, such as a Senior or Staff+ engineer, and so on. Ultimately, the baseline is the stable altitude you’ll find yourself regularly flying at or flying higher from, ideally. While it should feel like a stable place, remaining isolated at this altitude is not aligned with achieving your goals of elevated impact, so don’t let this space dominate all of your time: that’s a problem statement, not a solution. Our baseline should illuminate work to be done at higher levels, and that’s exactly what we’ll transition to next and challenge us to make space to fly at higher altitudes. --- ## Tooling: Your Altimeter Now that we’ve understood all the altitudes we could impact and established our baseline, let’s build this altitudinal structure into our productivity tool of choice! This will make this model tangible and actionable: something you can interact with on a daily basis! We’ll view our productivity tool or to-do app and how we structure these altitudes as our altimeter - the tool that enables us to fly at given altitudes and make enabling trade-offs with confident intentionality. ### Setup Whether you’re using Todoist, Things 3, or any other to-do app, almost all have several concepts for grouping or slicing to-dos. In most cases, this manifests as categories, tags, etc. I personally like the idea of using tags, or a horizontal-oriented grouping mechanism, because it facilitates maintaining an otherwise traversable vertical structure, such as Goals > Initiatives > Projects > Tasks/To-do. We care more about getting those “horizontal” slices of all of that work to be done, such as seeing what tasks across many projects live at the Director Altitude. Ultimately, we should be able to go to our to-do filter, isolate all the work that lives at a given altitude, and make intentional decisions based on that positioning. ![[Personal Altitudes - Things 3 Setup.png]] *(Example of tagging at work in Things 3: filters and tag to task assignment)* ### Shifting Your Behavior Certainly, you’ll need to make capturing the altitude a requirement whenever you’re creating a new to-do and project. You’ll simply want to build this into your habits of to-do creation. Apps like Todoist make that super easy using NLP in the input, such as “Task title @project \#group-altitude”, while others require some hotkeys to bring about the tag prompt (I’m looking pseudo-annoyed at you, Things 3 🤨). However, the goal here is consistency! What happens when that consistency fails, though? It can be helpful to create a “No Altitude” filter and regularly check for to-dos and projects without an assigned altitude to ensure everything is accounted for. Doing so on a weekly basis as you’re grooming your backlog of projects and to-dos before planning for the week ahead is an excellent recurring and systematic way to do this! This is reminiscent of “[[#The Problems Time & Intentionality|you falling to the level of your systems]]”: build systems that reinforce your desired behavior! ### Applying It As you plan for your week, instead of looking at your entire list of unfiltered to-dos, filter them by their altitudes and check against which altitude you aspire to fly this week. From the outset, this ensures that we’re building our week with a basis of intentionality and awareness at the level at which we desire to fly. You’ll be quickly surprised by all of the new opportunities for impact that have existed before you since last week: we pick up a lot of new work day-in-day-out! Challenge yourself to find a good mix of work by incorporating the [Eisenhower Matrix](https://jamesclear.com/eisenhower-box) model into your planning routine. When planning, while it’s regularly necessary to prioritize “urgent but not important” tasks, aspire to spend more time on “important but not urgent” tasks at higher altitudes. Whereas the former is more concrete and often times deadline or consequence-driven, the former, “important but not urgent”, is often associated with making way for significant long-term value or impact, yet can be challenging to be proactive about. Investments like strategic thinking and innovation ideation, work that positively and directly enables paths for your colleagues, designing systemized solutions around broader problem statements beyond the face-value ones, and more fall under this umbrella. Ideally, we spend as much time in the “important but not urgent” space as possible. This is more likely to align us to the elevated impact we aspire for, and this should be much clearer due to the increased awareness that our altitudes promote for us! Something to remember, especially for “newer to-dos” that you’re about to pull in for the week,  is to begin to enumerate all of the “sub-tasks” for the to-dos. In general, we tend to capture to-dos in an overtly simple way for brevity’s sake, so now is our best opportunity to intentionally mature them and give your future self a clear pathway for what successful execution looks like throughout the week! Now with our altimeter in hand, let’s surface the inevitable challenge you’ll face with this new awareness and tool: burning lots of fuel! --- ## Flying At Consistent Altitudes Planes burn fuel whenever they’re changing altitudes, especially when raising their altitude. This is synonymous with the needless energy loss we experience when oscillating amongst our altitudes too rapidly, especially within a single day. We otherwise call this context-switching, and we know that context-switching makes us inherently less productive and increasingly more stressed, which is not how we set ourselves up for success. We’ve all had one of those days, right? It looks like: ![[Personal Altitudes - Inconsistent altitude flights.png]] Days filled with many disparate topics, conversations, and actions can leave you feeling like you’ve traveled the world round and back again! That lack of consistency in our daily flight means we burn more fixed energy by transitioning to and from various altitudes, burning fuel along the way. This is not how we set ourselves up to achieve elevated impact - we’re burning a lot of productivity potential in those sharp altitude shifts! This tells us that the consistency of flying at a given altitude really matters and should be our goal. The reality is that you’ll never stay isolated at a given altitude, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water: the goal here is trying! Remember, your altitudes are where you aspire to have an impact, so don’t forget that and push yourself higher! To solve this problem, we need to champion our baseline and below altitudes! ### Championing Your Baseline & Below Altitudes Previously, we talked about [[#Establishing A Baseline Altitude]], and now we’re going to make it, and any of the altitudes below it, work for us! The time spent in your baseline altitude and below is the [canary in the coal mine](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/canary_in_a_coal_mine) of your elevated impact potential; it predicts your ability to achieve that elevated impact. If you spend all your time and energy in your baseline altitude or below, you will unlikely make those influential contributions at higher altitudes! Therefore, let’s discuss creating awareness and deploying basic solutions to fly more consistently at higher aspirational altitudes! You won’t believe the solution! 😜 ### Creating Awareness Altitudinal success isn’t about putting in more time; it’s about intentionally building toward your ability to make spending time at elevated altitudes less frictional. The more effortlessly you can fly higher, the more likely you are to achieve it regularly! And one of the best ways we can do this is by creating more awareness of what we’re getting ourselves involved in and the level of commitment we should take in those emergent things. This should help us manage some of the existing patterns you already exhibit when approaching work. #### Know No 37 Signals’, modernly known as [Basecamp](https://basecamp.com/), has popularized “[Knowing no](https://37signals.com/21/)”: > “No” is no to one thing. “Yes” is no to a lot of things. The idea is that whenever we say “yes”, we’re actually saying “no” to everything else that “could’ve been” in that time: to any other artifact we could’ve put in that time box. Maintaining an awareness of the consequences of our decisions brings about greater personal accountability for our aspirational impact at elevated altitudes. It thrusts us into a mindful trade-off mode where we become more aware and own the consequences of our decisions to prioritize A over B. If I continue saying “yes” to baseline or lower altitude work instead of redistributing it, why should you be surprised to under realize your elevated impact potential? Saying “no” can mean many things as well. We can either turn something down outright, such as politely dismissing an opportunity to take ownership of a task, project, etc., or redirect those asks. This redirection often comes in the form of “No, but” or “Yes, but” statements. For example, “No, but I can find someone who can own it” is always a great outcome. And this is exactly one of the ways we can ensure that we’re still moving things forward by seeking a different type of responsibility: accountability. #### Focus on “Accountability” Earlier, I referenced the idea that our role often has little official delineation between “responsible” vs. “accountable” baked into the job description: the outcomes themselves, as opposed to who produces them, are typically what’s most important. This philosophy is borrowed from the [RACI model](https://asana.com/resources/raci-chart) and can be used to illustrate “how” we should challenge ourselves to think about delivering work differently. This is especially true for elevating leaders, where the demonstration of distributing ownership of work that produces the outcomes/deliverables is more important than being the one who carries everything across the finish line. This reflects one’s leadership influence: the ability to mobilize distributed resources and collaboratively nurture and achieve success! These are imperative elements of exceptionally scalable leadership! To be “responsible” is to own the delivery of an outcome; you’re responsible for making it, whatever that is, happen. On the other hand, being “accountable” means you’re the individual who ensures the appropriate outcome is delivered. In many ways, the accountable individual often plays a supportive role to the individual who is responsible. Putting ourselves in “accountable” positions gives us more affordances to fly a little higher above the specific project or task: we keep a pulse but are likely not as deeply invested in it as the “responsible” individual. That makes space and opportunity to fly a little higher, which is what we’re looking for! Therefore, take stock of how much you’re responsible and accountable for. When you look at your baseline, ask yourself, “Where am I?” Are you regularly more accountable or responsible? In an effort to make space for higher altitude work, continue pushing to be more “accountable” to your baseline altitude and below. Ideally, we’ll achieve that through dual successes of delegation and empowerment! --- ### Solution: Delegation & Empowerment You saw it coming: delegation and empowerment are the fundamental levers you should pull to mature your baseline and lower altitudes to promote elevated impact at higher altitudes! This is done by maintaining an awareness, which we discussed above, that brings about a fervent intentionality to delegate to and empower those around you! The equation is simple: the better stability and coverage you have at your baseline and lower altitudes, the more affordance and confidence you will have to fly at higher altitudes, and with superb consistency! However, there is some variability in the maturity between delegating and empowering, so it is important to explore their differences. When we delegate, we assign particular responsibilities, such as tasks and projects, while we retain a level of accountability for them. While we’ve made someone else “responsible” for the execution, we’re still likely the “accountable” individual on the [RACI chart](https://asana.com/resources/raci-chart). Delegation is typically highly effective, particularly in short-term needs/situations. However, the ideal state is empowering those around you! This is the ideal unlock we should be targeting! Compare delegation with empowerment, and here’s where we start laying the foundation of maximizing our potential for flying consistently at elevated altitudes. As opposed to delegation, empowerment grants individuals accountability, authority, and autonomy of the work and space we’re handing them. This acts as a more sustainable form of delegation in that we’re up-leveling individuals and investing in a maturity of trust to foster greater growth and development opportunities for them, hopefully breeding future empowerment opportunities! Here are some further examples of the difference between delegation and empowerment: ![[Personal Altitudes - Delegation vs Empowerment.png]] ([Source](https://theunstuckgroup.com/empowerment-versus-delegation/)) With those distinctions being made, it is clear that wherever we can empower, we should! Both delegation and empowerment breed exceptional development opportunities, but empowerment will continue to reign supreme in this space because it adds structure and confidence to your baseline and lower altitudes that encourage you to elevate to higher altitudes with ampler confidence and implied stability. If you’re ever wavering on whether or not you’re delegating or empowering too much, remember that as we up-level, it’s natural that we up-level those around us, too. This is a healthy demonstration of our leadership growth! Everyone has their own altitude, and for those who report to you, you’re empowering them to an altitude above their baseline altitude, even though it is only a baseline for you! Unique growth is found in those altitude stretches. Therefore, this is a positive catalyst for your team’s immense growth at new altitudes! #### Personal Prompts As you’re considering whether to take ownership or not, especially at the baseline altitude and below, consider these questions: - Will I be going around (or over) someone else if I don’t delegate?  - Will it be a good opportunity for growth for someone else?  - Does it align with someone else’s goals?  - Will it overwhelm the person? Are they okay with it? Ask. - Is it an opportunity for me to advocate for someone by delegating? Will it give them broader exposure?  - Are they craving more responsibility? Ask. - Will it make the person feel special or valued if I ask for their help? - Does it match where I am supposed to be scoped (engineering/technology/ibotta), or is it tactical?  - Is it someone else's role? i.e. senior engineers can tech lead and coordinate with others - Is it appropriate to delegate? Some things are not, like difficult conversations. Ibotta already has an incredible internal source on this topic in “[[Drive Or Delegate]]”! I highly endorse this resource! It does a much better job of diving into various techniques, exploring various types of delegation, and more. Put this in your tool belt and frequently reference it to continue successfully up-leveling your delegation and empowerment! #### The Golden Phrase So you know you want to delegate or empower, but how do broach that topic with this individual you have in mind? There are many approaches, but I’ll highlight the one that I know works, the golden phrase: > I could really use your leadership here right now – Heather Shannon This is such an incredibly powerful phrase! In one sentence, we’re saying: - I trust you to be responsible for this and manage it effectively - I have deep trust in you! - I’m investing heavily in your leadership growth: I care about your goals and path, and I’m intentionally supporting it - I’m here to support you and make you successful - It’s time-bound: right now! Put this in your leadership toolbelt when approaching delegation and especially empowerment conversations! It’s an outstanding way to challenge and help encourage people to participate in new ways and grow, all while you’re making space for yourself to fly higher! --- # Summary 1. Know and enact your altitudes. Determine what these are for you, as they’ll depend on your goals and role. Ensure that you can align your goals with these altitudes. 2. Be judicious about your baseline altitude. Remember, if your baseline altitude and below is covered, you’ll fly more easily at higher altitudes and achieve broader elevated impact! 3. Systemize: start making things work for you instead of you always working for them. Use your altitudes to bring awareness of your current and future flight paths! Incorporate this into your favorite to-do app to get the maximum tangible value! 4. Act: delegate and empower at and below your baseline altitude. Find opportunities to delegate, which leave you accountable where necessary, but strive for strong empowerment. Remember, when you’re up-leveling yourself, it’s your responsibility to up-level everyone else around you as well. Use the golden phrase to your advantage to set strong positive motivators for others to take ownership and discover more effective phrases! Fly on! ✈️ --- # Resources - Alternative presentation format: [Personal Altitudes](https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/0/d/1TzUVIKfPBkeox1Z3SV8Ee5PFh9og7_0xFVCnVyskUZg/edit) - [Recording](https://ibotta.zoom.us/rec/play/TQxWlXeNXZYisXolJ9NHI3gTqCz6eqeL-yBAejN3zk4q1QV5Nnly2OP7zpY2ntcAc6XxrcYqWtk_3UMj.ix2atvcSRcfbomq5?canPlayFromShare=true&from=my_recording&continueMode=true&componentName=rec-play&originRequestUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fibotta.zoom.us%2Frec%2Fshare%2FgBu6DQmgfkGYr6cR-yuNW2NOYAlO4GFzXwkSZkKROKynmb5c780oTVdP1IATD884.phUwr5EMWUE2c7Zo) of the presentation for Engineering Manager University (EMU) - Passcode: `Hr28t0*B` - [[Drive Or Delegate]]