Startup Guide for Upcoming leaders: Doing more in same time

One of the constant pressure that keeps on developing for individual contributors growing to leadership roles, in a growing startup, is to keep doing more in the same time. Your vision, role, tasks are growing at fast pace and so does team size to handle.

Time is constant in life so you can just manage it better to be always productive. Sooner you can learn this skill, better you’ll be able to manage your task’s debt and avoid things getting piled up before they start affecting you and others.

Below is the way through which I decide my regular tasks to keep doing more in the same time as before. This also helps to balance my focus on growth while also not forgetting to fix up building blocks within team or company, which otherwise are going to hurt really bad, later on.

1. Start with, are you able to execute things that you envisioned? OR Are you able to take more responsibilities in same b/w or time?
2. If no, what are things eating away your major daily bandwidth? Are they going to go after some time?
3. If yes, by when? and keep this timeline in your plan of action. If no, you need to work on fixing it as per below flow:

• Eliminate: Is it needed? Is it impacting my key 2/3 drivers focussed for next few months or quarters?
• Automate: Templatize work about work / Automate monotonous things eating up your major daily or weekly bandwidth.
• Delegate: This is looked upon, by non-leaders, as one of the most misused ways or perhaps excuse to get away to get your hands dirty. In reality, it is totally opposite. Delegation doesn’t mean transferring your accountability but just a way to do lot more utilizing your team effectively than that you could have done alone. This also helps you to not lose focus on your key drivers while not being too busy in just a few tasks or milestones. Further, it helps your team to grow in their roles and thus making you grow as well.

If you do the above exercise for your past week, or the past few months — you’ll get to know where in you are putting your bandwidth unnecessary or leaving out actual key tasks to push your key drivers in lieu of that unproductive bandwidth. Keep doing this periodically (monthly or quarterly) and apply the learning to project your focus chart for coming months or quarters.

One of the major deterrents here would be unplanned but important meetings (as per focus funnel). You’ll have to unblock the person or team to make sure that they are not stuck while also managing your bandwidth for picked up tasks.

The key element here is quick decision making. Check first if you have enough information to make a decision and if not, ask the person to come back with same. Sometimes, you often need to make quick decisions, and you don’t have time to analyze the situation in full. It is best just to keep in mind your goals and rely on your instincts. Your effectiveness in such situations depends very much on the clarity of your goals and accordingly how much hard calls or sacrifices you can take. Anyways, this is separate topic to be discussed some other time in detail or perhaps in an another post :)