The most successful business leaders are the ones who are most able to focus their time, energy and resources on growing the business. However, this is not easy to achieve. Many business leaders get caught up in the day to day concerns of finding and serving customers and end up with little time for the really important activities that produce sustainable growth. The most important actions that would enable growth get lost among the minutiae of day to day responsibilities and actions which conspire to fill the day and soak up energy. This is a reactive, short-term approach to leadership which may help solve operational problems but makes it difficult, if not impossible to deliver future goals and objectives.
The leader also becomes more and more indispensable for short-term decision-making, all the while moving further away from the developmental and strategic role that is really required for long-term business growth.
The most successful leaders find ways to change how they operate and spend the much more of their time focusing on the delivery of next year’s plan and beyond. These leaders have clarity and focus; clarity about the key actions which are necessary to take the business to the next stage of growth and focus on delivering these actions. We describe leveraging your time, energy and resources in this way as “finding your Highest & Best”. Highest & Best requires a combination of better strategic thinking, more effective time utilisation and a focus on management and organisation development. The result is the development of a more capable organisation, pursuing a more effective strategy, with much less dependence on the leader to achieve short-term results.
The transition to Highest & Best is set out below
The above model illustrates the focus and development required to be a Highest and Best Leader; concentrating your time energy and resources on the areas which will have the biggest impact in delivering your vision and objectives.
You may have heard the analogy which describes the leader’s role as driving the train. We believe that a more accurate description for the leader’s role in this situation is not driving the train but laying the tracks!
Driving the train involves making sure that the business follows a predetermined track and arrives on time (delivery of short term objectives), while laying the track is about developing new routes for the future; a strategic focus on actions for next year and 4 years out to ensure that the vision is being delivered.
As a business leader you have a choice. You can continue to be reactive, focusing on the day to day, and remain personally involved in all aspects of the business. It goes without saying that persisting with this approach to leadership can only lead to personal frustration and the certain knowledge that your business will never achieve its potential. Your dreams and visions will remain unfulfilled unless you grasp the nettle of personal change and make the transition to become a Highest & Best leader.
Graeme Crombie and David McKeran
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