Steve Graves has a nice piece of what senior leaders should or shouldn't be doing with their time:

I’m sure you’ve heard of some version of the 80/20 rule. One version is that 20% of the folks do 80% of the work. This seems true to me at times, but that’s not my favorite 80/20 rule. My favorite applies to senior executives.

Most senior execs spend 80% of their time doing what someone else could do and only 20% doing the things only they can do.

The most successful leaders, however, flip it. They spend 80% of their time on what only they can do.

It sounds simple enough, but it’s a fight to get here. Senior execs usually are well experienced and full of opinions, so they find themselves in the weeds daily.

His list of the four primary tasks:

Directional Clarity
Strategic Movement
Culture Cultivation
Resource Stability.

The whole blog post is well worth reading and considering.