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)

1. Do as I say.
2. Research and report options.
3. Recommend and I approve.
4. Decide and inform me.
5. 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.