Are You the Bottleneck?

4-minute read

I love my Think Days. Hot coffee. Chill music. No distractions. I feel like I'm doing something unique to advance my team and my performance. And the results never disappoint.

Until this one.

I started my Think Day with five questions on my list.

This time, after staring at them for twenty minutes, I was stuck.

So I turned to a little AI kickstart. I asked it to review my work since the last Think Day so it could help with my five questions today.

Where am I taking on too much as a leader?
What bottlenecks am I causing?
What could be automated?
What should I hand off to my EA?
How could I truly multiply my impact?

AI exposed something I hadn't wanted to admit.

The Three Roles I Keep Playing

I’m the link that holds my team together. I end up playing three overlapping roles, all at once.

The architect. I design many of our operating systems instead of simply setting the outcome and letting someone else build them.

The editor. Board materials, appeals, strategic frameworks—too many things still come to me for a final check.

The convener. In meetings, I often frame the problem, assign the next steps, and help resolve issues.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these roles by themselves. Every chief fundraiser takes on all three. The problem comes when you do all three too much.

That's when a leader becomes a human middleware layer: work moves because it moves through you.

Helpful in the short term. Expensive in the long term.

So I started sorting the work that reaches me into four buckets.

The Four-Bucket Audit

For two weeks, keep track of what comes your way.

Not just what's on your task list. Include the things people ask you to review, approve, fix, decide, attend, rewrite, or weigh in on.

Then put each one into one of four buckets:

1. Only I can do this.

2. I need to approve this, but I don't need to do it.

3. I'm doing this, but I shouldn't be.

4. I should stop this entirely.

The fourth bucket is the toughest.

Stopping doesn’t always mean something goes away.

Sometimes it means someone else takes it on, or it happens less often. Either way, it’s no longer your responsibility.

The important part is that you are no longer the mechanism required to make it happen.

Then take the list to your team. Ask them what you've missed.

They probably know where you're the bottleneck before you do.

Nine Months of Think Days

I've been doing a version of this Think Day every month for the past nine months.

Four hours. No special location.

I close Teams, turn off Outlook notifications, and give myself permission to think big.

What's possible?

It's not even a full day. In four hours, I've produced my personal Stop Doing List, a Revenue Growth Playbook, and much greater clarity about the values I want to foster on my team.

The method changes.

The four-hour block doesn't.

I've come to think that's the real value of a Think Day. It creates space to notice the things that are almost impossible to see while you're busy running the operation.

Including the possibility that you've become part of the problem you're trying to solve.

Your Turn

Before Friday, identify three things you're still doing that belong in bucket four. Don't fix them yet. Just write them down.

Then ask yourself:

What would have to change for this to keep happening without me?

That's the question I'm working on now.

On My Radar

Sahil Bloom's "A Monthly Ritual That Changed My Life" is where my think day practice started. Bloom adapts Bill Gates's Think Week into one day with five question prompts. I began with his exact questions and have since built my own version around them.

Coming Next Week

Next Sunday: the $125,000 gift I nearly lost to three days of unchecked bias. I'll show you the Fair Play Screen I built so it never happens again.

Until next Sunday,
Christine

PS - Want the audit tracker with the counting done for you? Reply "tracker," and I'll send you the worksheet I built for this, with buckets, dropdowns, and a total that shows where your time is actually leaking.

If you know a chief fundraiser who still answers every question their team gets, share this with them. It could be the nudge they need to start their own audit.

Did a fundraiser send this to you? Chief Fundraiser Weekly is free every Sunday.

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I’m Christine Bork, Chief Development Officer at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

I write CFW to share what I’m learning as I lead a growing team and try to do the work sustainably and thoughtfully.

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