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Making TIME for Strategy: How to be less busy and more successful
Your future success as a leader depends on your ability to extract yourself from operational minutiae and make time for strategic activity.
If you’re having trouble getting out of the weeds, you don’t need a new productivity trick. You need to begin a deeper leadership journey to address four core factors – Tactics, Influence, Mindset and Environment (T.I.M.E.).
Richard Medcalf, an advisor to some of the world’s most accomplished CEOs, reveals the secrets to becoming a more strategic leader, and offers a complete set of strategies to help you elevate your focus.
Learn how to:
- clarify on your most important strategic activities
- build a robust plan to quickly free up time
- win over your key stakeholders
- address the beliefs that are keeping you in busywork
- create a culture of focus across your entire team
- and much more.
Making TIME for Strategy will radically change how you think about your path to leadership impact, and give you practical tools to move you away from incremental progress and closer to breakthrough results.
If you’re having trouble getting out of the weeds, you don’t need a new productivity trick. You need to begin a deeper leadership journey to address four core factors – Tactics, Influence, Mindset and Environment (T.I.M.E.).
Richard Medcalf, an advisor to some of the world’s most accomplished CEOs, reveals the secrets to becoming a more strategic leader, and offers a complete set of strategies to help you elevate your focus.
Learn how to:
- clarify on your most important strategic activities
- build a robust plan to quickly free up time
- win over your key stakeholders
- address the beliefs that are keeping you in busywork
- create a culture of focus across your entire team
- and much more.
Making TIME for Strategy will radically change how you think about your path to leadership impact, and give you practical tools to move you away from incremental progress and closer to breakthrough results.
- GenresLeadershipBusiness
226 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 8, 2023
58 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
Richard Medcalf
4 books4 followersI'm what you get if you were to put a McKinsey consultant, a slightly unorthodox pastor and an entrepreneur into a blender! I'm the founder of Xquadrant and a trusted advisor to exceptional CEOs and entrepreneurs, and their leadership teams.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 22, 2023
Making Time for Strategy: How to Be Less Busy and More Successful by Richard Medcalf is an effective guide to developing a strategic mindset and balancing daily work.
The book has two parts. First, Medcalf shares how problematic busyness is. Too many people think they are accomplishing goals because they are busy. Busy does not equate to being successful. Too often we become so busy that we neglect to see the big picture and we focus on the wrong things. This is referred to as “strategic laziness”.
Medcalf advocates that busyness is a problem – it is not a positive. Too many of us avoid strategizing because we have “too much on our plate”. Also, many fail to delegate because no one can do the work as good as we can, and we just can’t bring ourselves to say “no” or stay within our boundaries. If this sounds like you then this book can change how you think and work.
The second part of the book offers practical tools, ideas, and strategies for prioritizing your work, delegating, and setting boundaries so other people or projects don’t steal your time. I particularly enjoyed all the extra online resources that the book offers. Moreover, the book is written so that the reader can choose a particular chapter to focus on without needing to read the book in order.
Making Time for Strategy offers the prefect guidance for homing in your focus and developing strategies to think strategic and push back against busy work. Whether you are a student or a high-level manager this book is engaging and offers solutions for different learning and managerial styles. You will learn time management techniques, how to make time to focus solely on strategy, and how to prevent feeling overwhelmed and overworked.
The book has two parts. First, Medcalf shares how problematic busyness is. Too many people think they are accomplishing goals because they are busy. Busy does not equate to being successful. Too often we become so busy that we neglect to see the big picture and we focus on the wrong things. This is referred to as “strategic laziness”.
Medcalf advocates that busyness is a problem – it is not a positive. Too many of us avoid strategizing because we have “too much on our plate”. Also, many fail to delegate because no one can do the work as good as we can, and we just can’t bring ourselves to say “no” or stay within our boundaries. If this sounds like you then this book can change how you think and work.
The second part of the book offers practical tools, ideas, and strategies for prioritizing your work, delegating, and setting boundaries so other people or projects don’t steal your time. I particularly enjoyed all the extra online resources that the book offers. Moreover, the book is written so that the reader can choose a particular chapter to focus on without needing to read the book in order.
Making Time for Strategy offers the prefect guidance for homing in your focus and developing strategies to think strategic and push back against busy work. Whether you are a student or a high-level manager this book is engaging and offers solutions for different learning and managerial styles. You will learn time management techniques, how to make time to focus solely on strategy, and how to prevent feeling overwhelmed and overworked.
February 13, 2023
If you are like many people, you might feel like it’s impossible to make time for strategy. Whether it’s endless meetings, or urgent things that demand your attention, you will benefit from this book. Don’t have a couple of hours to read the book? Well, to benefit from Richard’s advice you don’t need to read it from start to end—though you may choose to. He’s written the book in such a way that you can take a Choose Your Own Adventure approach and tackle the most pressing issues. The book introduces helpful mnemonics like CRASH and IMPACT to ensure you’re protecting your time and that of your team to make time for the strategic work. One quote that particularly stuck with me is, “the most important project is the one that nobody is asking for”. I’m looking forward to putting these techniques into practice!
February 8, 2023
A very practical and applicable book to help you be a more efficient worker. This book gives easy steps to make your work process streamlined and thus more productive.
Great read for someone wanting to take their work or their team to a greater level of success.
Disclaimer: I received a digital copy of this book to read with no expectations in return. The above thoughts are solely my own.
Great read for someone wanting to take their work or their team to a greater level of success.
Disclaimer: I received a digital copy of this book to read with no expectations in return. The above thoughts are solely my own.
January 29, 2023
I got an advance copy to review. I like his approach to the subject, and his use of acronyms to help me remember key points. I used CRASH to look at my life and IMPACT to figure out how to apply the book
December 27, 2023
This book is a business book focused on employee efficacy from a leadership standpoint, and is very much written like a leadership book from a consultant - but it has some really great nuggets in it that are helping me reframe much of how I view my work and time at work.
March 5, 2024
Practical and useful book 📚 many known techniques, yet comprehensive and Refreshing
May 1, 2024
Really helpful practical guide to making time for strategic thinking.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews