One Way to Save Time: Find Leverage
I do this trick when I'm backing out of a parking spot: I'll turn my wheels just a tiny bit at the very beginning, then straighten them out again soon after to avoid hitting the car next to me. This small action positions my car to back out in a better direction. Then, when my front is out far enough, I can turn my front wheels all the way and be out in one try.
What is Leverage?
This few-inch turn of the wheels at the beginning makes a few-feet difference in my positioning once I'm backed out. This is leverage.
Yesterday I asked my husband to take some fish out of the freezer. Fish usually defrosts pretty quickly, and it was just a few hours before dinner. But he didn't know my trick of rinsing off that outer layer of frost with cool water, which gets the defrosting jump-started by a few minutes. Another example of leverage.
How does this concept of leverage translate to your leadership world? High-leverage leadership actions are quick actions you can take at the right time that will create bigger results later.
What it takes to create leverage
High-leverage actions require some degree of planning and foresight. The calculation of priorities needs to account for the leverage that will be created over time. For example, it will probably not feel important to go to your kitchen to take some meat out of the freezer in the middle of your morning of calls, but you will save so much time at 5 pm not struggling to defrost something for your family.
In the same vein, taking five minutes to get someone a document they need to work on in the morning so they have the full day with it. Or reaching out to a colleague to get on their calendar to kickstart a new project, even though you haven't had time yet to think about the project. Getting on the calendar becomes a high-leverage action because it then serves as a forcing function to get the ball rolling.
Leverage is even choosing to work at a certain time of day or location based on knowing your own conditions for success because you get more out of what you put in. Another example: delegating something that you don't need to do yourself. These are all high-leverage actions.
Client Example
My client, who recently stepped into the CEO role from a VP-level position, can serve as a less intuitive example of high-leverage time. One of his managers recently quit, and in a culture where turnover is relatively low, it concerned him when he heard rumors of another manager who was job searching. Even though most of his work is at the system level now that he's CEO, in this case, it is a high-leverage activity for him to connect directly with the manager rumored to be job searching.
The leaders I work with seem stretched thinner than ever. There are so many competing demands that it can be hard to separate the signal from the noise. One way to address this for yourself is finding those small 5-15-minute actions that make a big difference later.
