Wise words. Thanks for sharing your wisdom Daniel - brilliant as always. Strategically I always use my podium methodology - Gold, Silver, Bronze - never more than 3. And 50% of all my resources is behind Gold as that spins the flywheel. No flywheel - sell, hand over the business to someone else or shut it down & do something else that does.
Chris, I like the core diagnosis here: most founders do not need more hours, they need a better “decision machine.”
One question I am curious about, and I think it is the real failure mode in the wild. How do you keep these frameworks from turning into a weekly prioritization theater where everything still gets labeled important?
More specifically: what is your simplest forcing function for “stop doing” at the company level? Do you cap active bets (WIP limits), require a trade (one in, one out), or run a kill list review with explicit owner, date, and decision criteria?
If you have a quick example of a hard “no” that improved outcomes, I would love to see it.
This one is super easy - for 3 decades I've used my Podium Methodology (you'll have seen me post about it "5am Boring Routines" ). The Podium Visualize an Olympic Podium - Gold, Silver Bronze. No one remembers Silver and Bronze winners after a few years. In strategy Gold is the big asymmetric bet. The one strategic bet that "moves from flywheel from zero to spinning" / "takes a spinning flywheel and makes it actually fly ie huge kinetic energy lifts the entire business way above the market". 50% of the time, effort and resources goes on Gold. Choose wisely. Silver is important but fundamentally doesn't compare with Gold in terms of asymmetric returns. Bronze is a people pleaser, a necessity. Everything else goes into the "Parking Lot" - non essential to the flywheel. In 2007 I took over a new department as we prepared for IPO - I did 3 things in parallel - I met everyone in the team and asked them to explain the strategy and rank each bit by weight of importance (incredibly they had 17 planks on the strategy - something I called a "list vs a strategy"). I interviewed the board, SMT and asked the same but charged the ask to weighting the priority to move their piece of the business & the entire business forward. Lastly I ran some data to find out who was full of 💩. 17 planks became 3. I let half the team go. I knew who in the SMT (effectively internal customers or dependencies) were not up to it. I hope this helps.
Spot on. The most expensive thing a founder can do is be busy on the wrong tasks. When priority isn't clear, the Urgent always wins over the Important. We call this 'Management by Squeaky Wheel.' If you don't set the priority, your calendar will be hijacked by whoever is loudest or whoever sends the invite first.
For the organization, prioritization isn't just a productivity hack; it's a leadership obligation. Without a clear direction or 'North Star,' your team will naturally gravitate toward the easiest tasks or the loudest fires. By not making the hard choices of what's the most important thing to focus on, you'll pay for it with wasted team energy and operational chaos.
The most effective way I've seen to handle this issue is to create company initiatives on a yearly or quarterly basis. It helps to focus each department or team's goals so they begin to reprioritize which issues to bring to the CEO.
Great advice. I spent significant time ie quarters figuring out the flywheel. Use my podium methodology - gold, silver, bronze - never more than 3 OKRs. Gold gets 50% of the resource/focus as it's most likely to spin the flywheel. I only delegate goals very slowly when I'm feeling/seeing the spin in the data. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and wisdom 👏
What makes this hard is that urgent work often feels responsible.
BUT there is a point where being helpful starts getting in the way of being effective.
That is usually where urgency has taken over and delegation has fallen behind.
Important work often looks quieter than urgent work, but it tends to matter more.
If you keep holding on to work that no longer needs you, you leave no room for the work that does.
We have to keep relearning that.
I wrote about that here too: https://millennialmasters.net/p/power-of-saying-no-delegation
Wise words. Thanks for sharing your wisdom Daniel - brilliant as always. Strategically I always use my podium methodology - Gold, Silver, Bronze - never more than 3. And 50% of all my resources is behind Gold as that spins the flywheel. No flywheel - sell, hand over the business to someone else or shut it down & do something else that does.
Chris, I like the core diagnosis here: most founders do not need more hours, they need a better “decision machine.”
One question I am curious about, and I think it is the real failure mode in the wild. How do you keep these frameworks from turning into a weekly prioritization theater where everything still gets labeled important?
More specifically: what is your simplest forcing function for “stop doing” at the company level? Do you cap active bets (WIP limits), require a trade (one in, one out), or run a kill list review with explicit owner, date, and decision criteria?
If you have a quick example of a hard “no” that improved outcomes, I would love to see it.
This one is super easy - for 3 decades I've used my Podium Methodology (you'll have seen me post about it "5am Boring Routines" ). The Podium Visualize an Olympic Podium - Gold, Silver Bronze. No one remembers Silver and Bronze winners after a few years. In strategy Gold is the big asymmetric bet. The one strategic bet that "moves from flywheel from zero to spinning" / "takes a spinning flywheel and makes it actually fly ie huge kinetic energy lifts the entire business way above the market". 50% of the time, effort and resources goes on Gold. Choose wisely. Silver is important but fundamentally doesn't compare with Gold in terms of asymmetric returns. Bronze is a people pleaser, a necessity. Everything else goes into the "Parking Lot" - non essential to the flywheel. In 2007 I took over a new department as we prepared for IPO - I did 3 things in parallel - I met everyone in the team and asked them to explain the strategy and rank each bit by weight of importance (incredibly they had 17 planks on the strategy - something I called a "list vs a strategy"). I interviewed the board, SMT and asked the same but charged the ask to weighting the priority to move their piece of the business & the entire business forward. Lastly I ran some data to find out who was full of 💩. 17 planks became 3. I let half the team go. I knew who in the SMT (effectively internal customers or dependencies) were not up to it. I hope this helps.
Spot on. The most expensive thing a founder can do is be busy on the wrong tasks. When priority isn't clear, the Urgent always wins over the Important. We call this 'Management by Squeaky Wheel.' If you don't set the priority, your calendar will be hijacked by whoever is loudest or whoever sends the invite first.
For the organization, prioritization isn't just a productivity hack; it's a leadership obligation. Without a clear direction or 'North Star,' your team will naturally gravitate toward the easiest tasks or the loudest fires. By not making the hard choices of what's the most important thing to focus on, you'll pay for it with wasted team energy and operational chaos.
My version of squeaky wheel is leaky pipes! Thanks for sharing your experience and wisdom ✨
The most effective way I've seen to handle this issue is to create company initiatives on a yearly or quarterly basis. It helps to focus each department or team's goals so they begin to reprioritize which issues to bring to the CEO.
Great advice. I spent significant time ie quarters figuring out the flywheel. Use my podium methodology - gold, silver, bronze - never more than 3 OKRs. Gold gets 50% of the resource/focus as it's most likely to spin the flywheel. I only delegate goals very slowly when I'm feeling/seeing the spin in the data. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and wisdom 👏
I like this approach! Great way to organize everyone's efforts in an easy to understand method.
This is excellent as always 👊
Thanks mate 👏