Dependable Everywhere. Strategic Nowhere.
The work that makes you feel useful may be the same work that keeps you replaceable.
Introduction
Happy rest day to my Nigerian readers. Today, I want to talk about a trap I see talented finance professionals fall into all the time, often without realising it.
It is the trap of becoming the person who can always sort things out, but rarely has the space to step back and shape what matters most.
The Problem
In finance, we are often praised for being dependable. For being thorough. For being responsive. For being accurate. For being the person people turn to when something really matters. That reputation is valuable, and it is something to be proud of. But if we are not careful, it can also keep us trapped in a version of value that is too small.
Over time, that reward system creates a problem most professionals do not notice until they feel stuck.
You begin to measure your value by volume: the number of reports you produce, the number of questions you answer, the number of meetings you attend, the number of small fires you put out before anyone else even smells smoke.
Then one day, the business says it wants finance to be more strategic, and suddenly you realise you have no room left to think.
It is not because you are lazy, and it is not because you lack ambition. It is often because your time is still filled with work that once made sense, but no longer deserves the space it takes.
And this is the difficult part: some of the work you are holding onto is not protecting your relevance. It may be stopping you from growing into a more valuable role.
Real partnering requires sacrifice. Practical sacrifice. You must stop doing some familiar things, even some praised things, so you can become valuable in fewer, bigger, more commercially meaningful ways.
A Story
A while ago, I worked with a finance manager called Kemi who had one of the cleanest month-end processes I had seen in a mid-sized business.
Her reconciliations were tight. Her reporting timetable was reliable. Her finance pack went out every month without fail. She had built the kind of reputation many finance professionals aspire to: steady, trusted, dependable.
But underneath all that competence, she was tired.
Every month, she produced a report that took her at least 3 full business days working hours to update. She updated seven recurring spreadsheets. She attended four standing meetings where finance was expected to “give an update.” She also answered every ad hoc question from department heads because, as she put it, “If I don’t respond quickly, they’ll say finance is blocking them.”
So one afternoon, I asked her a simple question, and it shifted the conversation in a way neither of us forgot.
“Which of these outputs changed a decision last month?”
She paused.
It was clear that she was spending so much time creating things that no one was using. Upon review, she realised that most of what she spent time and effort on had real consequences if they disappeared.
Over the next month, she cut the reporting pack down significantly. She moved two reports from monthly to quarterly. She stopped attending one meeting and sent a short exception note instead. And nothing broke.
But something changed.
What changed was that she finally had room to focus on the work that genuinely moved the business forward.
She had somehow become more influential in the business due to the improved physical and mental bandwidth.
Ajibola’s Tips
1. I separate work into three buckets because I have learned that not all work deserves the same weight in our minds. First, split the work into the mandatory bucket, legacy bucket, and value bucket. Compliance, payroll, tax deadlines, statutory reporting, and critical controls belong in the mandatory bucket. They have to be done. But even then, they should become cleaner and lighter over time. Legacy work is different. It is the old report, the old meeting, the old reconciliation, the old pack that stays alive mostly because it has become familiar. Value work is the work that helps someone make a better decision. I have found that if we do not separate these three clearly, mandatory and legacy work has a way of presenting itself as responsibility.
Action Tip: This week, list your recurring monthly work under three headings: mandatory, legacy, and value. Create a plan to ruthlessly cut down on the mandatory and legacy work.
2. I ask “who uses this…and for what?” because a report with no clear reader is often just a habit in disguise. If you cannot explicitly name the reader, you will usually struggle to name the decision. And if you cannot name the decision, there is a good chance the work is creating the feeling of usefulness more than actual value.
Action Tip: Summarise all your recurring reports as well as some recent ad hoc reports, and write the name of the actual reader and their use beside every section. Leave the blank spaces blank.
3. I use the 30-day break test because some work stays in our lives long after its purpose has gone. I have seen teams feel nervous about stopping a report nobody had looked at in months. The report felt important simply because it had always been there. But when it was paused, nobody asked for it. Sometimes that silence tells you everything you need to know.
Action Tip: Choose some low-risk outputs and propose a 30-day pause. Tell the users you are testing whether it still supports a decision.
4. I cut before I automate because speed is only useful when the work itself is worth keeping. I have seen teams’ automated work for outputs that nobody cares about. The output looked impressive, but the decisions did not improve. That is why I try to start with a gentler but more important question: Is this useful in the first place?
Action Tip: Before automating any report this week, write one sentence that says what decision the automated output will improve.
5. I protect value work on the calendar because the most meaningful work is not always the loudest. Payroll is urgent. Suppliers are urgent. Month-end is urgent. Strategic work is often much quieter. It waits patiently while everything else pushes to the front. If you do not make room for it on purpose, it will keep being postponed by work that simply knows how to shout.
Action Tip: Block two hours this week for one value task linked to cash, margin, pricing, or operating rhythm. Treat it as a meeting with the future of your role.
“The work that proves you are dependable is not always the work that proves you are valuable.” Ajibola Jinadu
Grow With Us
If today’s issue resonated with you, I hope it encourages you to start building a finance role shaped more by decisions and impact than by sheer volume of output.
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Conclusion
Your workload will not quietly shrink on its own, and in most cases, the business will not be the one to suggest removing work from your plate.
The business will keep accepting everything you are willing to produce. That does not mean everything is needed. It usually means nobody has been forced to decide what matters.
To me, this is where real finance leadership begins. Not in working longer or producing more. But in having the judgment to ask which work still matters, which work no longer does, and where your best thinking is genuinely needed.
Start small. One report. One meeting. One recurring task. Ask what decision it helps improve. If the answer is unclear, that may already be telling you something important.
Cheers,
Ajibola