The Leadership Playbook: Four Questions for Leaders About Results

Where do you spend your time? How do you ensure you are investing your energy in the right places? Here are four questions and some thoughts about what leaders do to produce results.

1. How much energy are you investing in your greatest opportunities? It’s easy to get caught up in solving problems. You will always have demands on your time, your energy, and your focus. But the results that you produce as a leader are strategic. Your biggest initiatives have to take precedence over problems. And if you are dealing with the day to day . . .
2. How much time are you investing the leaders you are building? Zig said you don’t build a business. He said you build people and they build the business. Zig was right. You are building a leadership factory. The greatest investment you can make is in building your current leaders and helping them build the next generation.
3. How much time are you spending building the capacity for change? This is the Disruptive Age. At no time has change come faster, nor has it been so disruptive. And we are just getting started. In 1999, Tom Peters wrote, “The past is going to look like a mellow prelude.” The organization you lead is going to need to be agile. Your core competencies are going to change. And the ability to adapt to change is the surest plan for survival.
4. How much time are you spending reading, thinking, and learning? One of the very best people for you to spend time alone with is you. You need time alone to read. You need time to do the hardest work of a leader: thinking. As things change faster and faster, you need to learn at a pace that allows you to keep up (probably impossible, but fight the fight and try not to fall too far behind). Get off site. Bring a legal pad and pens.