The Leadership Mindset Shift: From Firefighting to Future Focused
Mindset first: your calendar is your strategy
If your calendar is full of other people’s priorities, you’re not leading. The shift is simple (not easy): design your time, delegate decision rights, and run a weekly CEO rhythm that keeps you future focused.
The Future Focused Leader system
1) Time design (70/20/10)
- 70% Strategy & Sales: vision, customers, partnerships, capital.
- 20% People & Ops: 1:1s, hiring, culture rituals, unblockers.
- 10% Admin: approvals, finance reviews (scheduled).
Action: block a weekly CEO Day (no internal meetings; customers, strategy, thinking).
2) Delegation ladder (5 levels)
- Do as I say.
- Research and report options.
- Recommend and I approve.
- Decide and inform me.
- Own it—tell me if it goes off track.
Map every recurring decision to a level and person this quarter.
3) Decision rights & RACI
- Document who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed for core processes (sales, delivery, marketing, finance).
- Publish it; stop approval bottlenecks.
4) Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) + North Star
- One North Star (e.g., net revenue retention, MRR growth, gross margin).
- 3 to 4 quarterly OKRs only; each with 2 to 3 measurable KRs.
- Review weekly; adjust, don’t ignore.
5) Meeting cadence that creates clarity (not theatre)
- Weekly Leadership (60 mins): metrics, blockers, decisions, owners.
- Weekly 1:1s: outcomes, coaching, wellbeing.
- Monthly Retro: strategy check, pricing, product, talent, cash.
- Quarterly Offsite: OKRs, budget, org design.
6) Build a simple leadership dashboard
- 10 to 12 metrics max: revenue, gross margin, sales pipeline health, cycle time, NPS/CSAT, churn/retention, cash runway, hiring pipeline.
- Visual traffic lights; owner per metric; weekly notes on variance.
7) Kill work
- Cancel meetings without a clear owner or decision.
- Sunset projects that don’t move OKRs.
- Create WIP limits: individuals max 3 active priorities.
8) Founder boundaries (energy management)
- Device free thinking block daily.
- Exercise and sleep as non negotiables.
- One evening a week completely off.
Strong leaders protect the system that lets others win.
Use AI as your chief of staff
- Draft agendas, capture actions, email summaries after meetings.
- Build dashboards from exported data; identify outliers and trends.
- Draft policy/SOP updates from your notes.
Prep investor/customer Q&A briefs from CRM activity.
