High Leverage Leadership: 5 Ways to Multiply Your Management Impact

Read Time: 4 minutes

One of the most iconic and quoted Twitter threads of all time was written by Naval Ravikant:

How to get rich (without getting lucky).

This section on leverage caught my attention:

As a student of leadership and having spent a couple of decades in finance, the multiplying power of both capital and people was clear to me. But…

1. While anyone who has used Excel can appreciate the power of code on a local level, it’s hard for our brains to truly grok code at a global scale. Millions are hard to accurately imagine. Billions are impossibly so.

2. Media struck me as being reserved for the ultra-elite and powerful who controlled it. Now, it can be dominated by anyone with an iPhone and something insightful to say.

3. He missed one: Learning. Perhaps it’s implied, but the human brain is the ultimate device for compounding. And we’ve never had more access and support to learn anything. But like any system, the output is very much determined by the quality of the inputs.

It also got me thinking. While he was speaking to CEOs and startup founders, what about the millions of other leaders? Can they apply these principles to amplify the impact of their teams?

Absolutely.

Capital

Know Your Numbers

Want a predictive indicator of a strong CEO? Ask them how their business is doing. If the answer is current, precise, and focused on 2-3 key financial indicators that accurately represent the health of the business, I’d bet they’re pretty solid.

And all leaders should act as the CEO of their own area. Knowing your numbers builds personal capital and creates the confidence to be entrusted with more resources.

Spend Money Like It’s Yours

When leaders would ask me for more funding for a new initiative, I’d typically ask them, “Would you bet your bonus on it?” If they balked, my answer was pretty clear.

The ones who really understood how to play the game would come with tradeoffs. They showed me what they were going to cut in order to fund the new initiative in order to chase the one with more promise. But be careful what you offer up. Your manager might take you up on your offer.

People

Recruit to Complement

All people, as long as they create more value than they consume, provide you leverage. But those that bring diversifying perspectives, experience, and capabilities to the table produce outsized value for you. While we can be drawn to people who think or engage just like us, the goal is to find complements, not get compliments.

Pay up for Top 1%

For roles that sit at the heart of your business, it is almost always worth playing up for stars. They might be 20% or even 50% more, but their incremental impact isn’t linear. It’s exponential.

And the best ones allow you to do better with fewer. So, it has the secondary benefit of also reducing complexity. Here’s proof:

Training

Training is consulting with a free option on learning. When someone asks for training, don’t force them to make a complicated case. Instead, ask them what problem the training will allow them to solve that they can’t currently.

For most leaders, that single problem might be a five or even six-figure issue. It pays for itself at almost any cost. Plus, they’ll likely learn more than just that (see learning below) and possibly meet valuable contacts as well.

BTW - One of the best-kept secrets about our business is that we run our MGMT Accelerator program in-house for companies. If you have 20+ managers who’d benefit from a more systematic way of leading, hit reply on this email to set up a time to see how our program fits your needs.

Code

Automate

If you can hire a computer to flawlessly execute a task 24/7 with no breaks, you’d be crazy not to. And with the rise of no-code tools, the boundaries of what can be done this way are expanding rapidly.

Start small. Stop going back and forth on scheduling meetings and use Calendly. Don’t write elaborate emails when you can record a Loom video that conveys your tone and emotion, too. Even email rules are a huge lift.

Analyze

Code doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes, it’s just enough that you can use it to get the key metrics on your business or team.