Building Organizational Focus With A Leadership Agenda

By Leo Hopf

One of the most important decisions you can make as a leader is how you allocate your time and attention. And yet most leaders do not explicitly make this choice. Instead, they allow the demands of the day to drive their attention. They are always busy, but they are not always busy on the topics that add the most value to their organization.

Creating A Leadership Agenda
Begin by creating a list of topics you could address in the coming months. Next, take a blank sheet of paper, and draw a line across the middle of it. Then go down your list one topic at a time, and place each topic either above or below the line on your paper. Placing a topic above the line means you are committed to spending time on it. You are doing so because you believe the topic truly matters and because you believe it is best dealt with at your level in the organization. Placing a topic below the line means the topic could be delegated, delayed, or not addressed at all. Placing it below the line does not mean it has no value. Instead, it is simply an acknowledgment that spending your time on this topic will have a lower return than spending it on a higher-value, above-the-line topic.