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Aurelius · Work & Leadership
Knowledge + Guidance

I became the OT lead—so why do I miss the real work?

You took the job to help more patients, not fewer. Instead you got caseloads, spreadsheets, and targets, and the hands-on work — the part that made you an OT in the first place — now belongs to other people. You feel the loss. Be honest about that instead of pretending the title alone should satisfy you. Here is what you are not seeing: the work did not disappear. It changed shape. Every patient your team treats well, you had a hand in — through the schedule you set, the caseload you balanced, the obstacle you removed before they even noticed it was there. That is not a lesser kind of usefulness. It is a different one, and it requires you to stop grieving the old job before you can do the new one properly. Your team feels the targets land on them the same way you feel them land on you. So this is not a problem you fix alone in your head. Sit with your team and decide, together, which numbers actually serve the patients and which ones are just noise you've all agreed to suffer. Then act on what you control.

◆ How this problem reads on the two dials
GuidanceKnowledge
More coaching
A little to learn
1:1 with AureliusWith others (a Pod)
Some one-to-one
Practise with peers
The core issue is identity and choice under a role change, which responds more to direct coaching than to new information.
How the two dials adapt to you →
What’s really going on

The meaning did not vanish. It moved. You once healed with your own hands; now you build the conditions that let others heal well. That is still real work — but only if you choose it. Stop measuring your days by what you used to do. Measure them by what your team delivers.

🔒 What you’ll build togetherUnlock by starting
A movePick one way to stay in direct contact with patient care this month — a case review, a shift covering, a consult — and put it on the calendar before the week fills up without it.
A moveWith your team, name the three things you actually control this quarter — assignment, scheduling, one metric — and say out loud what you don't control. Stop spending energy on the second list.
A moveAsk each team member once this week: 'what's slowing down your patient work right now?' Then remove one obstacle you hear, even a small one.
A moveBefore your next target-setting meeting, ask your team to help set the number. A target built with them serves care; a target handed down serves the spreadsheet.
A moveWhen you catch yourself missing 'real work,' name exactly what you miss — the patient contact, the visible result, the competence — and find where that still exists in your current role, even in a smaller form.
PractiseObstacle Clearing Round · a Pod of 4 · 30 min

What changes unlock by starting

  • You stop resenting the metrics and start treating them as tools you can shape, not forces you suffer.
  • Your team experiences you as someone who clears obstacles, not just someone who counts cases.
  • You locate a real, current source of meaning instead of mourning a job you've already left.
  • Decisions about caseloads and targets get simpler because you and your team have named what's actually in your control.

Related problems

One object, two jobs: a public answer to a real problem, and — the moment you start the chat — Aurelius’s live plan for your version of it.