The short guide
How to win back hours every week
Filter before you say yes
Playbook 03, PVC: where to spend my time and energy, is the free sample. It is a daily filter that sorts every request by the value it creates, so you can see which hours go on work that should not be yours. Most managers find several hours a week on the first pass.
Seven ways to say No then gives you the words to push back without damaging the relationship.
Fix the meetings that eat your week
If nobody can say what a meeting is for, cancel it. Fix your meetings walks through every recurring meeting in your diary: keep, shorten, merge or drop. The four boxes then helps you decide what to achieve, preserve, avoid and eliminate before you add anything new.
Stay in your own layer
Switching between strategy and firefighting all day feels like leadership. It makes you the bottleneck for everything. Three layers: stay in yours and Your role as a leader show you which work belongs to you and how to stop doing your team's job.
Track one number: hours a week on low-value work. Count it at day 0, 30, 60 and 90.
