Not My Job
Gaps can happen in many shapes and sizes, and you need to recognize when a gap needs more senior leadership attention instead of trying to absorb them all. In those cases, you should be working on properly communicating the gap and its risk to the business (and risk to which part of the business) and NOT attempting to solve everything.
I’ve definitely fallen into this trap many times: trying to fix everything, accomplishing little, burning out.
Assessing whether what you are doing day to day needs to be an intentional process, something you and your manager re-assess routinely and compare to your goals and the organization goals.
100%. So simple, yet so difficult.
This is a nuanced issue, and I’m not ready to write too much about it yet. I think there’s a Staff+ failure mode where you continue to operate as an experienced IC while refusing to step outside of your comfort zone or choosing not to engage with work that you don’t know exactly how to do. Individual performance reviews play a role there. At the same time I think it’s important to choose your focus wisely, so that whatever it is you do choose to do actually gets done well.