You know the saying, “It takes money to make money”?
Well, the same thing applies to “time.”
When you start looking at your time as an investable asset, you realize that many of the activities you’re doing on a day-to-day basis are giving a meager return on investment.
How do you know it is a low return on investment? You’re doing the same tasks over and over on repeat.
Without a structured repeatable or automated process you get focused on doing the busy work. Your time becomes about completing a dozen tasks in a day as opposed to working towards the one strategic outcome that will get you to the next stage of business.
There’s a difference between something that you can do today that will save you time tomorrow versus something you do today that can change the ultimate trajectory of your business over multiple years.
Entrepreneurs that look at time as an investable asset ask themselves: If I invest X amount of time into this today…
- how will it pay off for me in the future?
- how will it save me time down the road?
- when will it start to save me time?
One of those high-return time investments that will change the trajectory of your business is learning how to make decisions collaboratively with your team.
Let’s paint a picture of two worlds.
World A: You decide the company’s quarterly OKRs yourself.
- Gains: It’s quick, it’s autonomous. You spend a weekend thinking about it and announce it to your team. Nearly zero planning time, so you can start executing on Day 1.
- Pains: You spend more time convincing others of your views, helping them understand your perspective, and the back-and-forth for how implementation works. The company relies on you for high-quality decisions. Few are able to contribute strategically.
World B: You involve your whole team in deciding the company’s quarterly OKRs.
- Gains: You maximize buy-in and understanding, making goals stickier. The company relies on many for high-quality decisions. Many are able to contribute strategically.
- Pains: It takes upfront planning time and coordination. You may not like what your team has to say. It takes longer to find the “right” OKRs.
Which is it going to be?
News flash: I believe the ROI of World B is much greater than the ROI of World A.
This is an example of a high-ROI time investment into your team. It’s the difference between being bogged down as the Chief Problem Solver who needs to be available at any and all hours, and being the leader who coaches their team to create their own solutions. It saves you time in the long run.
One way you can work with your team to facilitate decision-making together and coach them toward creating their own solutions is the Conscious Conversation Framework. I designed this tool based on real world experience plus research in social psychology, psychological safety, and human motivation.
Implementing this framework takes time. It may even be counter-intuitive to how you were taught to lead a team. Yet, it’s a high-value investment that will help to elicit the best ideas and make a decision to move forward collectively, with buy-in and trust at the center.
Read below to learn how you can use this high-return investment tool on your team.
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