How To Prioritise Your Effort
As you look ahead to what 2022 has in store for you, I wonder how you have segmented the year?
‘Turbulence ahead: New Leaders Required’ was the title for a piece published at the end of 2021 in the FT. The article put the spotlight on the attributes required for leaders to successfully navigate their organisations through the continued uncertainty and turbulence, and one of the aspects identified was that leaders would need to be fit for the long term.
It’s already been a hard slog for so many leaders over the last two years. How can you make sure that you protect and maintain your stamina over this year and beyond?
As ever, there are some brilliant lessons from sport that have been hiding in plain sight. Did you know that it’s possible to win a tennis match even though you have won fewer points than your opponent? Sounds wrong doesn’t it. But it is true. And the top players, the ones who win consistently, know this, and prioritise their efforts in a way which recognises this. You can actually see it happening; a player has won the first set of a best of five set match; they are 5-1 down in the second set, with their opponent about to serve; they don’t fight 100% in the next game. Why? Because they have already accepted that they are more likely than not to lose this set; the effort they would need to put in to try and win it most probably does not pass a cost/benefit analysis; and if they lose the set on this game, they will be serving in the first game of the third set, giving them a better chance of taking that game and starting ahead.
It’s about timing your effort, in the best way possible.
Leadership can be relentless. The more senior you are, the more demands there are on your time, the more capable you become, and the more you are able to successfully accomplish. But you cannot be all things to all people, and you need to direct those energies in a focused and clear way. It’s too easy to become overwhelmed if you don’t. All organisations, and all sectors, have their rhythms and patterns. Some of this can be controlled, and some of this is imposed externally. By way of example, the regulatory requirements imposed on listed companies, with the need for quarterly reporting, present a challenge for many CEOs and their leadership teams with the relentless burden this places on them. It’s vital to find your way through these requirements, in a way that ensures you can continue to ride the waves and perform over the long term.
So what can you do?
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business is an excellent book on running a successful company written by Gino Wickman. Many small to medium sized businesses use it as their bible. One of the aspects of the book is the focus on 90 day cycles. Wickman emphasises the value and importance of creating a 90-day world, ensuring that in pursuit of your overall Vision and objectives, you are chunking, prioritising and pacing yourself.
As noted earlier, some time patterns and rhythms you can control, others will be foisted on you. Whatever the case, you can make sure that you don’t fight it, but go with it. Recognise the patterns, adapt your effort, maximise it when it’s most needed, and give yourself a breather when it’s appropriate.
And we can borrow a practical tip from Julia, CEO of a business for the last 15 years and which two years ago completed a deal with a well-known private equity house. Julia knew that this deal would mean more onerous requirements on her and her top team. So at the start of the year, she mapped out the upcoming year in terms of Board meetings and reporting schedules, and marked in red the weeks of the year that she believed would be the ones that would require maximum effort from her. Doing this has helped massively in reminding her to ensure that her energy and stamina levels are at their highest for these periods.
For more on this or any aspect of leadership, with a healthy dose of mindset, sport, and I hope usefulness thrown in, do feel free to browse through all the articles in the Huddle, or get in touch with me directly on catherine@sportandbeyond.co.uk. This topic will be included in my forthcoming book, where I will be sharing the lessons from sport that leaders have been missing, all focused on how to last the distance.