Do a little experiment this next week. Keep track of how many hours you spend doing the following activities. All of your work hours must be sorted in the bucket which best describes the activity:

• Internal Coordination and Alignment: those activities focused on status reporting, getting buy-in, getting updates, correcting misunderstandings, and setting priorities.
• External Results: those activities which directly produce, execute, for fiinish something visible for the customer, which they value.

The Lean strategists would tell you the more things you do that are directly visible and valued by the customer, the leaner the organization overall. I am not sure who said it first, but you should never equate activity with results.