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Most organizations have one person holding them together. They remember every promise, catch what is slipping, stay late when a deadline is in trouble. If you lead anything, there is a good chance that person is you.
In this episode I explain why heroic effort is so tempting, what it quietly costs, and what to build instead, so that good work keeps happening whether or not you are having a good week. It is also the first of a series taking the review into each area of life, starting with work.
In this video:
- Why we lead the way we were led, and why that works only until the volume outgrows one person
- The coach who never takes the ball
- The three costs of heroic effort: it caps the work, ties quality to your week, and leaves when you do
- Why discipline without a system is an excellent second floor on a poor foundation
- Three conditions to build instead: write it down, decide once, review on a fixed rhythm
- The five questions of the Weekly Work Review
Square It Away: put thirty minutes on your calendar for this week’s review. Before it arrives, write down one thing only you know, and put it where someone else can find it.
Chapters
- 00:00 The person holding it all together
- 00:27 If you lead anything, it may be you
- 00:57 Heroic effort doesn’t scale
- 01:15 Six domains, starting with work
- 01:57 We lead the way we were led
- 03:16 The coach never takes the ball
- 04:14 Cost one: it caps the work
- 05:25 Cost two: quality tracks how you feel
- 06:10 Cost three: it won’t outlast you
- 07:00 A stewardship question
- 07:15 Systems before discipline
- 07:40 Once you are oriented, discipline makes it inevitable
- 09:25 Build conditions: write it down
- 10:28 Decide once
- 11:27 Review on a fixed rhythm
- 12:05 Disappointing people at a rate they can absorb
- 12:42 The Weekly Work Review
- 14:17 Square It Away
- 14:35 The template and The Compounding Mind
Get the Weekly Work Review template:
https://www.squaredawaylife.com/posts/heroic-effort-doesnt-scale
Get a free pre-publication copy of The Compounding Mind:
https://www.squaredawaylife.com/newsletter
Books in this episode:
- Liz Wiseman, Multipliers
- Claire Hughes Johnson, Scaling People
- Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
- James Clear, Atomic Habits
- William Zinsser, Writing to Learn
Earlier episode: Managing Agentic AI (sal020)
#Leadership #Management #Delegation #WeeklyReview #Systems #Stewardship #SquaredAwayLife
