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As a leader, so much rests on your shoulders, and everyone wants your time for something. It's a never-ending balancing act that can make you feel constantly off balance. There's no end to the productivity hacks you could employ, but some situations call for more than a hack.
When you're stuck at a plateau, you need to adopt a new strategic mindset: Do what only you can do and empower others to handle the rest. Inspired by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin, this framework can help you focus on your strengths, improve company operations and growth, and avoid burnout.
The comparative advantage framework
The comparative advantage approach is an economic principle and a leadership strategy. By focusing your time and energy where you create the most value, you free yourself from unnecessary tasks, and collectively, your team becomes more efficient, productive, and impactful.
Consider this framework as four separate phases: Evaluating, delegating, focusing, and prioritizing.
1. Remove tasks without an absolute advantage
The first step is to strip away blocks of time-consuming tasks where you're not bringing anything uniquely valuable to the table. Leaders often feel obligated to keep these duties because "that's how it's always been done."
The obvious example to consider for employee benefits agencies is account service work. As a leader, running service for your clients should be one of the first things you remove from your plate. You likely have team members who are really good at managing client accounts, and it's a job best done as a full-time role. Part-time service work is likely poorly done service work.
Other things agency leaders may consider eliminating include accounting, department management, routine marketing tasks, and meeting organization.
✅ To do: Evaluate your major responsibilities and ask yourself, Would the outcome be nearly as good or better if someone else handled these? If yes, select a team member or an outside service provider to be the new owner of these key operational responsibilities.
2. Delegate tasks with little comparative advantage
Even when you're good at something, that doesn't always mean you should be doing it. For tasks where your expertise is marginally better than others, empowering someone else can strengthen your team and save you precious time.
Perhaps you're good at running team meetings, but the prep takes a lot of time. There are other things you could do that would benefit the company more.
Look for someone else on the team who is also good at running meetings or someone who has shown an interest or promise in such leadership skills. Give them the gift of learning or enhancing this skill. You don't need to remove yourself from it entirely, but enough that it frees up significant time and allows someone else to grow.
✅ To do: Track your time and identify the various things you do, mainly without thinking about them. You probably do them easily and claim, "They don't take much time." But that time adds up, and someone else could do it better or more efficiently.
3. Focus on tasks where you have a strong comparative advantage
Once you've cleared your plate, you can reinvest that time in areas where your leadership has a disproportionate impact. These are the tasks that require your vision, strategy, and expertise.
In an agency, the leader likely has their role because they started the company or have invested the years and have the strategic expertise to run the show. Focus on how you came up and where you get the most energy.
Looking at some examples: Does client strategy fire you up where you feel best when building plans and talking with clients? Do you excel at managing people and leading teams? Whatever your jam, figure out how to spend most of your time in this area.
✅ To do: Identify your strength(s) and intentionally lean into these tasks. These are the areas when your presence matters most.
4. Prioritize the tasks only you can do
Some tasks are yours alone. Whether it's long-term strategic planning, developing future leaders, or ensuring the pipeline always produces high-value revenue, you must do or lead this work to avoid compromising organizational growth.
Think about your most important contributions. You may have a clear vision for the company, and you've been the driving force behind its growth. Maybe part of your superpower is building others into leaders who take on key organizational roles as you grow. Or perhaps you're a rainmaker, developing new client relationships with exceptional networking talents and teaching your producers how to do the same.
Whatever your specialty is, you need to retain it, own it, and dedicate regular time to it. Everyone on the team needs to know what it is and help you create boundaries to respect it.
✅ To do: Block off dedicated time for these efforts. They are too important to fit into the margins of your day.
Delegate with intention
When you choose to delegate responsibilities, the people receiving them need to understand your intent in handing them off. Are you dumping something on them or allowing them to grow in their roles?
Think through a couple of scenarios:
- You want to get something off your plate, so you delegate it to someone without much forethought other than, "Not me." However, indifferently passing off responsibilities to others will likely generate similar results and, even worse, cause resentment. If it's unimportant and brings little value, stop wasting time on it—yours or anyone else’s.
- A current responsibility is a critical function that needs dedicated attention. You have a team member who has skills or shown interest/promise in this area, and they could devote the time and attention it needs. When you delegate, hand it off with the level of importance it deserves and emphasize to its new owner that you've given them something significant to the organization.
A more thoughtful approach to leadership
Delegation doesn't mean disappearing. A strong handoff includes clear expectations and check-ins to ensure alignment.
Leaders will always be busy, but being busy doesn't have to mean being overwhelmed. By aligning your time with your strengths, you'll create more impact for your team and clients, avoid the burnout trap, and provide growth opportunities for your team.
Content originally published on Q4intelligence
Photo by Y.A./peopleimages.com
