How Leaders Should Spend Their Time

When you run a marathon, you look ahead to where you want to go, not down at where you are now. Oth­er­wise, you’ll end up face first on the ground.

I talk about this in Make Your­self Use­less, Chap­ter 10 in Your Oxy­gen Mask First. The job of a leader is to keep their eyes up and ahead, on the future, to lay the foun­da­tions to get there; and to make peo­ple so strong and so sup­port­ed they can do their jobs with­out you.

Peo­ple often get stuck in the wrong time hori­zon, and don’t invest enough ener­gy on where they can have the great­est impact. CEOs should spend a notable amount of time on the next three to five years — 15% to 95% depend­ing on where the busi­ness is at — but def­i­nite­ly not zero.

To make this work, every team mem­ber needs to under­stand the CEO’s job and their own role, respon­si­bil­i­ties and time­lines to ful­fill their strate­gic plan.

Note: This is a frame­work and may be dif­fer­ent, depend­ing on your sit­u­a­tion and stage of business.

How Lead­ers Should Spend Their Time

1. CEOs ben­e­fit from a notable amount of focus on what will have a big pay­off and impact in the next three to five years.

• Enhance the strategy
• Be an ambas­sador and build relationships
• Recruit key talent
• Explore mod­els, expan­sion, acqui­si­tions, or future products
• Main­tain gross margins
• Under­stand what hap­pen­ing in the mar­ket and the future needs of customers
• Look for and devel­op their successor.

2. EXEC­U­TIVES ben­e­fit from invest­ing much of their time on the next 90 days to the next year or two.

• Exe­cute the pri­or­i­ties and bud­get of their department’s quar­ter­ly plans
• Make sure their teams are sup­port­ed and suc­cess­ful in get­ting their work done
• Lay­ing foun­da­tion for what needs to hap­pen in the next two + quarters.

3. SENIOR MAN­AGERS ide­al­ly have most of their focus on the next week to 90 days.

• Exe­cute the quar­ter­ly plan.
• Deliv­er on their pri­or­i­ties and over­see front­line staff.

4. MANAGERS/SUPERVISORS focus on today and up to the next two + weeks.

5. TEAM MEM­BERS and front­line staff should focus on today and pos­si­bly the next cou­ple of days.

The Chal­lenge

• As a CEO, are you spend­ing enough time on the three-to-five-year time horizon?
• As an exec­u­tive, leader or man­ag­er are you spend­ing enough time on your opti­mal time horizons?
• If not, how can you recalibrate?

Want to hear more about how lead­ers should spend their time? Lis­ten to Episode 97 of The Growth Whis­per­ers.

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

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