#1: First, Manage Thyself
Before managing others, you must first manage your own productivity, discipline, and focus. The performance of those around you often reflects your own. As an executive, your standards, time management, and self-leadership will directly impact the team’s ability to deliver. Prioritize improving yourself to lift the overall capability of the organization.
#2: Do What You’re Made For
Instead of striving to fix every weakness, focus on your natural strengths. Identify the skills where you truly excel, then refine them to the highest level. Maximize your impact by channeling energy toward areas where you can be uniquely effective. Address weaknesses only when they hinder the full realization of your strengths.
#3: Work How You Work Best (and Let Others Do the Same)
Understand and respect your most productive working style, and ensure that you operate within it consistently. Whether it’s early mornings or deep work in isolation, structure your day to support your personal peak performance. Similarly, empower others by allowing them to work in the way that brings out their best results.
#4: Count Your Time, and Make It Count
Your time is the most valuable asset you manage. Track it, measure it, and use it deliberately. Consolidate time into blocks for deep, uninterrupted focus, and maintain discipline in guarding against distractions. Whether leading meetings or strategizing, ensure that every moment drives progress towards your most critical goals.
#5: Prepare Better Meetings
Meetings should be efficient, purposeful, and outcomes-driven. Always have a clear agenda, know the objective, and invest more time preparing than the meeting itself takes. Without proper structure, meetings waste valuable time. A well-prepared meeting fosters decision-making, clarity, and actionable next steps, while cutting down unnecessary discussions.
#6: Don’t Make a Hundred Decisions When One Will Do
Avoid getting caught in decision fatigue. Instead of reacting to every small decision, focus on identifying the broader patterns that drive the most important outcomes. Find solutions that address multiple situations at once, and create decision frameworks that can be applied consistently, streamlining your leadership efforts.
#7: Find Your One Big Distinctive Impact
Leadership isn’t about doing everything—it’s about making one or two truly significant contributions. Identify where you can make the greatest, lasting impact, and focus your resources there. This could be a strategic decision or an initiative that fundamentally changes the course of the organization.
#8: Stop What You Would Not Start
A key aspect of prioritization is knowing when to stop. If you wouldn’t start a project or continue an initiative today, then consider whether it’s still worth pursuing. Free up time, energy, and resources by eliminating or delegating tasks that no longer align with your core objectives or growth strategy.
#9: Run Lean
Complex organizations can become burdened with internal inefficiencies. Simplify your structure by focusing on key roles filled by highly capable individuals. Give them meaningful responsibilities and autonomy to execute. A lean, high-performing team achieves far more than a large team where talent is diluted and energy is wasted on internal friction.
#10: Be Useful
Beyond success and survival, the most important question is: How are you being useful? Maximize your contribution by focusing on what adds real value—to the organization, to people, and to the world. Keep your work grounded in practical, tangible outcomes that make a difference, regardless of the scale of the role.
