Time is the only thing you have to spend.

As you sit down to plan your day, you have some choices to make…

You can spend your time on “sure things,” tasks you know how to do and are confident you can complete today. That feels good (I got something done), but you have no leverage on that time. You do one hour’s work; you get an hour’s worth of results.

You can spend that time on speculative projects and big ideas that could be a game changer in 2-3 years. This is potentially a highly leveraged use of time that feels good for a different type of person. Investing in things that are way out in the future means you don’t have to face short-term feedback. Are you doing a good job? We’ll find out in 3 years!

Another way to measure progress

As the leader of a team, you can also choose to invest time in the team. You can clarify the direction you see the team going. That can be reinforced by creating clear measurements of success and finding better ways to report on those measures. You can coach team members to improve their skills with the work and working with others. Instead of “fixing” their mistakes, you can return work to them with comments so they can fix it (and learn). This time is highly leveraged; every hour you spend benefits the whole team.

But spending time on the team doesn’t usually feel productive, at least in the short term. You got nothing off of your to-do list. No client deliverable moved forward because you sat with a team member for an hour to help them communicate more clearly!

Instead of doing the work, this effort is building a machine to do the job. The more work you put into the process and the people, the more productive the machine gets.

How do I decide?

No leader can spend 100% of their time building their team–but 99% of leaders could devote more time to it. They might see less progress in the next 30 days (because they produced less themselves). But they’d be blown away at how much farther along they are a year from now.

This is one of those times when slowing yourself down means the whole enterprise can accelerate.

What keeps you from allocating more time to building your team?