Our leadership team is highly capable and aligned, but they are all working eighty hours a week and running on fumes, which is causing them to make poor strategic decisions. How do we use the Delegate and Elevate tool to free up their capacity and get them out of the weeds?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your leadership team is running on fumes, they are not leading, they are just reacting. Burning eighty hours a week is a sign of a structural capacity issue, and it will eventually lead to operational paralysis and poor decision-making.

To break this cycle, you must take the team through the Delegate and Elevate exercise. Have each leader list every single task and responsibility they handle in a typical week. Then, have them sort those tasks into four quadrants:
- Love doing and am great at
- Like doing and am good at
- Do not like doing but am good at
- Do not like doing and am not good at

The goal is to get your leaders spending eighty percent of their time in the top two quadrants. Anything in the bottom two quadrants must be systematically delegated down. This might require hiring middle managers, restructuring roles, or using AI to automate repetitive administrative tasks.

Force your leaders to let go of the vine. By delegating tactical work, you free up their mental capacity to focus on strategic execution, leading their departments, and driving the business forward.