Welcome to Day 1, Why leaders get trapped working in the business instead of on the business.
As companies grow, complexity increases faster than clarity.
What looks like a leadership problem is usually something else entirely:
- unclear ownership
- decisions without a stable reference point
- systems that can’t hold accountability
When that happens, leaders compensate.
They step in.
They decide.
They translate.
They firefight.
Not because they want to but because the organization quietly needs them to.
This is why leadership time disappears as companies scale.
Not due to poor discipline, but due to structural gaps that pull leaders back into execution.
What to watch for
As you think about your own business, ask yourself:
- Which decisions still escalate to me?
- Where am I stepping in “just to keep things moving”?
- What would break if I stepped away for two weeks?
Those aren’t personal failures.
They’re signals.
And once you can see them, they’re fixable.
What’s next
Tomorrow, we’ll look at why meeting cadence either kills chaos - or creates more of it.
That’s where time loss starts to compound.
If this feels familiar, you don’t need more ideas.
You need clarity on why decisions still route to you...and what to change first.
If you’d like help diagnosing where leadership time is leaking in your business, the next step is simply a conversation.