Most CEOs I talk to know they spend too much time in the weeds.
They know they should be spending more time thinking about where the company is going, developing their leadership team, looking for opportunities and making strategic decisions. Yet the day starts, something needs their attention, and before they know it, they’ve spent most of their time working in the business.
The question is, how much time?
I recently interviewed an entrepreneur, Gabe, who told me about an exercise he used when he realized he was spending far too much of his time tactically.
For two weeks, he tracked his time in 15-minute increments. He recorded what he was doing and categorized his activities as strategic or tactical.
The results were eye-opening. He discovered that far more of his time was being spent tactically than he realized.
This immediately resonated with me.
Early in my career as an industrial engineer, I conducted several time studies. There is something very revealing about seeing how people actually spend their time instead of relying on how they think they spend it.
Our conversation got me thinking about how valuable an exercise like this could be for CEOs and their leadership teams.
What Are You Actually Doing All Day?
The exercise is very specific. Every 15 minutes, record what you’ve been doing.
You don’t need to write a paragraph. Record enough information so you’ll remember the activity when you analyze it later. You can use a spreadsheet, an app or even an ongoing chat with an AI tool where you dictate your activities throughout the day.
I would also pay attention to the questions and requests that come your way because they can tell you something about the hats you’re wearing.
If you spend part of your morning answering detailed customer questions, for example, write that down. If an operations manager asks you to make a decision that could potentially belong to them, record it. If you’re asked to review marketing copy, troubleshoot a service issue or approve something that another leader could approve, those activities tell you something about the role you’re actually filling.
At the end of one or two weeks, you should have a much clearer picture of where your time is going.
Then comes the important part: analyzing it.
Strategic or Tactical?
One of the distinctions that the exercise will reveal is between strategic and tactical work.
Strategic work requires you to step back and look at the business as a whole. What’s working? Where are the gaps? Where should you invest resources? What opportunities should you pursue? What does the company need next? What decisions need to be made about its future?
Tactical work is much closer to execution. You’re involved in delivering the service, managing projects, solving customer problems, reviewing work, handling details or making decisions that could potentially be made somewhere else in the organization.
There is plenty of important tactical work in every company. Someone needs to do it.
The question for a CEO is how much of it should still be done by you.
That’s where this exercise can become uncomfortable.
You may discover that you’re spending a large percentage of your time doing work that belongs to a position you held several years ago, when the company was much smaller.
Maybe you’re still acting as the head of sales for part of the day. Then you become the customer service manager. Later, you’re the operations person. By the afternoon, you’re reviewing marketing.
Meanwhile, you’re also the CEO.
As a company grows, the CEO’s role has to grow with it. If you continue carrying all the same responsibilities you carried when the company was half its current size, eventually you become the constraint.
Pay Attention to What You Enjoy Doing
Something else that came up in that conversation was the value of looking at how you feel about the work you’re doing.
Which activities do you enjoy?
Which responsibilities do you find yourself putting off?
Where do you feel that you’re contributing at your highest level?
Where do you find yourself thinking, “Why am I still doing this?”
Of course, CEOs aren’t going to enjoy every responsibility that comes with the position. That’s realistic.
When you look at a week or two of data, though, you may see patterns you hadn’t noticed before.
You may discover that the work where you bring the most value is continually being crowded out by responsibilities that could be handled by someone else.
You may also discover that there is an activity you genuinely enjoy and are very good at, but when you look at it objectively, it still doesn’t belong in the CEO role.
I see this frequently with entrepreneurs. They built the company by doing many of these things themselves. They may be excellent at sales, customer relationships, problem-solving or service delivery. Those abilities helped them get the company where it is today.
At some point, you have to ask whether continuing to do those things will help the company get where it needs to go next.
Have Your Entire Team Do It, Too
Gabe also had his entire team conduct the exercise, which made it possible to look beyond his own role and see how time and responsibilities were distributed across the leadership team.
Ask each team member to track their activities for one or two weeks using the same basic categories. Have them look at strategic versus tactical work, the different hats they’re wearing and which activities they enjoy doing.
Then compare notes.
This could lead to some very interesting conversations.
You may discover that your COO is doing work that belongs with a department manager. Your sales leader may be handling administrative responsibilities that could be delegated. Two leaders may discover they’re both involved in the same decisions. Another leader may be spending time on work that nobody realized was still sitting with that position.
You may also find gaps. There may be responsibilities that keep moving around the leadership team because nobody clearly owns them.
When the entire team does the exercise, you’re able to look at how work and responsibility are distributed throughout the organization.
Instead of having a general conversation about needing to be “more strategic,” you have actual information in front of you. You can discuss what needs to move, who should own it and what has to be put in place for that change to happen.
Knowing Where Your Time Goes Is Only the Beginning
Seeing the data doesn’t automatically change anything.
If you discover that you’re spending the majority of your time tactically, those responsibilities are still going to be there Monday morning.
Someone has to take responsibility for them.
Go through the activities you’ve identified and decide what really belongs with you. Then look at everything else.
What no longer needs to happen?
What can be simplified?
What can be delegated?
What should move to another existing position?
Where do you need to add capacity to the organization?
And what would another person need in order to take responsibility for the work successfully?
That last question is especially important because successful delegation requires more than deciding that you don’t want to do something anymore.
Delegation Requires Transferring What You Know
If you’ve been doing something for years, you probably carry a tremendous amount of information in your head.
You know what to look for. You know which exceptions matter. You know how to make decisions because you’ve encountered the same situations many times.
The person taking over doesn’t automatically have that knowledge.
Before you can successfully transfer responsibility, you need to extract what you know and make it usable by someone else. That may involve documenting the process, clarifying decision-making criteria, training the person, defining what success looks like and making sure they understand what they own.
Otherwise, you may hand off the task, but the person still has to come back to you to figure out how to do it.
This is where a time study can lead to a much bigger conversation about how the company operates.
You May Need to Reshape the Organization
Sometimes what you discover can’t be solved by simply moving a few tasks around.
You may realize that your organizational structure no longer supports the company you’ve become.
Perhaps too many decisions still flow through the CEO. Maybe a department needs stronger leadership. Responsibilities may need to be redistributed. You may need another management layer or a different position entirely.
As the company changes, roles need to change with it. Responsibilities need to move. People need to develop. Processes need to capture knowledge that used to live with one individual.
That includes the CEO.
What begins as a very simple study of where your time goes can tell you quite a bit about how your organization is functioning.
And when the entire leadership team does it, you have an opportunity to look at the organization together.
Where are your leaders spending their time? Which hats are they still wearing? What work should move? Where is knowledge concentrated with one person? What would need to change for everyone on the leadership team to spend more time doing the work their current roles require?
Your calendar can tell you quite a bit about the company you’ve built.
The question is whether the way you’re spending your time matches the company you’re trying to build next.
Written by Adi Klevit.
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