You're Not Leading. You're Just Busy

The Email That Stopped Me Cold

A CIO I know sent me an email about eighteen months into her role. Just one question: "When do I get to lead?"

Her calendar was wall-to-wall. Vendor calls, security incidents, budget reviews, escalations from tier 2 support. Fifty-plus-hour weeks. And she felt like she hadn't moved the needle on a single thing that mattered. No strategy advanced. No culture initiative gained traction. When I asked what percentage of her time was truly strategic, she said five percent.

You're Probably Running Her Calendar

Here's the part that might sting: if you're an IT leader in local government (or any leader for that matter), there's a good chance your week looks a lot like hers. And you're probably telling yourself the same story: that once things calm down, you'll get to the real work.

They won't calm down. That's the job. The question isn't whether operational demands will ease up. They won't. The question is whether you'll keep waiting for permission to lead, or whether you'll just take it.

The Fix-It High

There's a reason operational work is so hard to step away from. It feels good. A server goes down and you fix it. Done. A security gap shows up and you patch it. Handled. A frustrated department head calls and you smooth it over. Relationship saved.

Every one of those moments gives you something strategic work never does: a clean finish line. You can point to the result. You can feel yourself getting things done. Meanwhile, a day spent on vision or culture or team development ends with nothing you can show anyone. It's messier, it's slower, and nobody sends you a thank-you email for it.

That gap between what feels productive and what actually is productive, that's where most IT leaders lose years of their career without realizing it. I call it the fix-it high: the addictive pull of visible, immediate results that quietly crowds out the work that changes anything long-term.

What Changes When You Stop Firefighting

The CIOs I've watched make this shift don't suddenly have fewer problems. They have fewer recurring problems. Because they invested in organizational health instead of just treating symptoms.

The leader who protects time for real one-on-ones discovers problems before they blow up. The one who communicates a clear direction has teams that don't need constant course correction. The one who builds culture instead of just talking about it sees lower turnover and stronger engagement.

It's counterintuitive, but pulling back from the daily grind actually makes the daily grind run better. Not overnight, but over months, the compounding effect is unmistakable.

Start With One Thing

If your calendar looks like that CIO's, packed with urgency and empty of strategy, don't try to overhaul it in a week. Pick one leadership activity. Maybe it's unhurried one-on-ones with your direct reports. Maybe it's blocking two hours a week for strategic thinking. Maybe it's a quarterly all-staff meeting you've been meaning to start.

Pick it. Protect it. Treat it like a critical system outage, because it is.

The residents your agency serves don't need a CIO who's busy. They need one who's building something that outlasts the next emergency. That only happens when you stop confusing motion with progress and start protecting the time it takes to actually lead.