great executives aspire to do nothing

There should be nothing regularly on your calendar that could be done by somebody else.

If you imagine a version of your organization that has succeeded beyond your wildest dreams for it, I guarantee you that executive time and bandwidth dedicated to that new version is required. If you're able to conceive of that future ideal state and it's something you believe should happen, you're hurting the organization and the community or customers you serve by not finding the bandwidth to achieve it.

When organizations do this well, it cascades to every other role. Through your VPs, your deputies, their deputies, and so on. They're all going to do a better job at what they're doing if they're pushing down more to others.

A major benefit of this is that you open growth trajectories in the organization that are powerful employee value propositions. You're able to promote internally with ease, which is radically transformative when you can do it reliably.

Another benefit is you are generally able to assume that when something does come your way, it's because it requires your attention, and your attention only. You can make this assumption because you’ve trained and delegated well, so the history of the people under you is that they take care of most things themselves.

And so the actual experience of walking around in your job, with your title, is to wait until something gets surfaced to you. And while you’re “waiting” you’re actually spending your time and energy making the organization more of what it can and should become.

-ben