Push and pull management
Push and pull management means a manager’s default is pushing their skill into the goal work, and being pulled into business-as-usual only where they are genuinely needed. Most companies run the reverse by default, which is why the change work gets whatever attention is left over.
The default nobody chose
Business-as-usual is urgent, visible and arrives in your inbox. Change work is important, slow and arrives only if you go and find it.
So a manager with no explicit rule will spend their week on the first and attend the second. Nobody decided this. It is what happens when attention follows whatever shouts.
Flipping the default
The rule is simple to state and hard to hold: the goal work gets the manager’s planned time, and business-as-usual gets their exception time.
Holding it requires the operational layer to be genuinely good enough to run without constant supervision, which is why a working KPI scorecard with owners and thresholds is a precondition rather than a nice extra. If the only way to know that operations are healthy is for a manager to watch them, they will never be free to do anything else.
What it buys
A manager pushing into the goal work brings the thing a team of specialists usually lacks: pattern recognition across the business, and the standing to remove an obstacle that sits outside the team.
It also changes the signal. Where the manager spends their week tells everyone which work matters, far more reliably than any statement about priorities.
What is push and pull management? +
A manager’s planned time defaults to the strategic goal work, and they are pulled into business-as-usual only where genuinely needed. It is the reverse of the usual pattern.
What has to be true first? +
Business-as-usual needs a real KPI scorecard with owners and thresholds. If health can only be judged by a manager watching it, no manager will ever be free to push anywhere.