What Would Happen If You Spent Another 10% of Your Time on Growth?

As com­pa­nies grow and become more suc­cess­ful, they often become more com­plex. That’s when CEOs and their teams are most like­ly to be pulled down by prob­lems and slowed down by fear.

While prob­lems in a busi­ness can indi­cate and high­light issues that need to be addressed, they can some­times be pure dis­trac­tions. Of course, it feels good to see a tan­gi­ble out­come when we fix or improve some­thing, but if we spend most our time here, there’s usu­al­ly not much left to focus on growth.

And fear is a pow­er­ful tool for us to thrive when we are con­cerned about poten­tial prob­lems. But we can also spend too much time wor­ry­ing about things that are nev­er going to hap­pen. When we are lost in fear, we’re not focused on the high-val­ue things that actu­al­ly make a difference.

Both these sce­nar­ios con­tribute to what I call the grav­i­ty of growth – the forces that can drag and slow a com­pa­ny down.

True Growth = More X’s

True growth can only be achieved when lead­ers dri­ve more of the key met­rics of the business.

When lead­ers lift their heads above prob­lems and fears to look at oppor­tu­ni­ties – the future pos­si­bil­i­ties that help the busi­ness to get more rev­enue, more cus­tomers, more prof­it – and have the courage to push ahead, they make deci­sions and get into action.

To do that, they must allo­cate their time properly:

• Enough to address day-to-day issues that improve the busi­ness and
• Enough on new opportunities.

Know­ing where most of their time is spent, now, is a good first step.

Spring Clean Your Calendar

One of the CEO’s I work with just did a cal­en­dar exer­cise, with help from his assis­tant. They looked at all the activ­i­ties in their cal­en­dar, over the last quar­ter, and cat­e­go­rized them as either ​‘improve­ment’, ​‘analy­sis’, ​‘agony’ or ​‘growth’.

(Click here to learn more about those cat­e­gories and The 4 Forces of Growth.)

This is a great, eye-open­ing exer­cise — no dif­fer­ent than a spring clean­ing on your garage or clos­et to dis­cov­er how much time is – or isn’t — actu­al­ly spent on growth.

This exer­cise gives you sol­id data and helps you to see where you can allo­cate more to what mat­ters most.

Start with Just 10%

And I know free­ing up time can be chal­leng­ing. Unless a CEO has a pres­i­dent or COO to over­see every­thing on the oper­a­tional side of the busi­ness – with­out the right team, del­e­ga­tion and account­abil­i­ty in place – they can’t tru­ly be freed up to be strategic,

It’s too much of a leap to go from, say, 25% of time spent on growth to 60% or 70%.

But, as I advised the CEO in this sto­ry, you can turn this around. Start by tak­ing just 10% of the time spent in oth­er areas and real­lo­cate it to growth, and you’ll see a huge improvement.

The Chal­lenge

• What per­cent­age of your time would you say is focused on growth, now?
• How can you free up 10% more to focus it?

Read more about tak­ing time for growth in next week’s blog.

Oth­er Blogs

• Invest in Your Sweet Spots
• Do You Cre­ate an Envi­ron­ment of Autonomous Accountability?
• Set­ting Expectations

Old­er Podcasts

• Micro-man­ag­ing My Team What Should I Do?
• Three Busi­ness Growth Barriers