Hypoxia
I've been thinking about a metaphor that one of my previous reports used to use to describe information as you move "up the chain": He would say that the "amount of oxygen" you have reduces significantly as you move higher up. (As with mountain climbers; as you move up the mountain, the air is thinner and there is less oxygen in each breath. Mountains and org charts have similar shapes, so I guess that's another layer to the metaphor that helps it stick.)
It's been a few months now, but I think the point he was making is that you have significantly less information density as a manager of managers (or as a manager of managers of managers), and you must recognize that this is your new environment. I think this realization leads to a few useful, directly actionable insights:
- You must get used to having fewer details and less information than you are used to, despite still needing to make decisions for your team/organization. This pushes you to delegate more frequently and more confidently ("confidently", relative to your now-diminished ability to collect the right set of data).
- This is structural, and no amount of heavy breathing will replace the missing oxygen at your new level. This pushes you to really focus your time and attention on the things that matter, rather than trying to stretch yourself thin across every single initiative or problem your team needs to solve.
But there's another, more terrifying implication that maybe tortures this analogy a bit. In cases of acute hypoxia, individuals rarely realize that there is anything wrong; the lack of oxygen at higher altitudes actually impairs your judgement to the point that the simple cure (moving to a lower altitude) doesn't look like one of the options*. You may feel some dizziness or nausea, but climbing a mountain is hard work, and you don't expect to feel at 100%. Ultimately, how can you tell if these mild discomforts are natural parts of the job, or if you are on the verge of acute hypoxia and are truly unable to make sound judgements?
(Note that the hypoxia symptoms I'm referring to are more true for airplane pilots who rapidly ascend to a high altitude, rather than mountain climbers who gradually make their way up a mountain. Whether your ascent up the org chart is at airplane or climbing speed may change your ability to recognize these symptoms.)
Even after all this, I'm not positive I understood the precise point he was trying to make. Perhaps I should get my blood oxygen levels checked.