Growth creates opportunities. Leadership is deciding which ones to ignore.
One pattern shows up repeatedly in growing companies:
- 20 initiatives
- 15 “top” priorities
- Constant urgency
Everyone is busy, yet somehow the most important things still aren’t getting done.
Here is what is often over-looked: every initiative consumes leadership attention, management capacity, meeting time, and decision-making bandwidth.
The result isn’t more progress…it’s slower progress on everything.
That’s why some of the most effective leadership teams operate with a surprisingly small number of priorities at any given time.
If everything is a priority, nothing is.
The goal isn’t to have fewer good ideas, rather to create a system that prevents today’s urgent new ideas from disrupting today’s important commitments.
That’s why, when helping them implement EOS, I teach leadership teams to operate in a “90 Day World.”
Every 90 days, come up for air, spend a day with the leadership team, pick only a handful of priorities (3 to 7), then put your head down for the quarter and finish them.
Constraint creates progress and momentum compounds much faster than most leaders expect.
What’s more common in your business right now: a shortage of ideas or a shortage of focus?
