The Founder's Playbook The Highest Leverage Activities for Founders

Stop Playing Whac-a-Mole, Start Pulling Levers

If you’re a founder, you’re probably running on caffeine and chaos. Your Teams and Slack are on fire, investors are DM’ing you, and your team wants answers yesterday. The bad news: you will never “catch up.” The good news: you don’t have to.

To maximize productivity, founders should use a structured schedule to prioritize high-leverage activities and reduce distractions.

Definition: High-leverage activities are energy multipliers that turn a smaller amount of time and energy into outsized results by optimizing the input of your time and resources to yield maximum output.

Focusing on a few high-leverage activities can yield 95% of the value and impact for a company, especially when you identify the one thing that will drive the most impact. Time is a fixed resource that cannot be increased, making its efficient allocation essential for entrepreneurs who want to maximize productivity by focusing on high-impact tasks and delegating low-value work.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle directly contributes to better time management and leadership effectiveness, especially when high-leverage activities are aligned with your life goals, leading to a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

The founders who build generational companies are not busier than you. They’re leveraged. They’re playing chess while everyone else is playing whac-a-mole. Learning to identify and execute high-leverage activities is essential for scaling a business effectively.

There is a genuine sense of accomplishment that comes from completing high-impact work. The best strategy for managing time is to prioritize tasks that yield the highest returns. This guide shows you how to stack the highest-leverage activities so every hour you work produces 10X the output.

1. Understanding Leverage (Why “Doing More” ≠ “Getting More”)

Leverage in business is like compound interest in finance: a small, consistent action can yield outsized returns. Optimizing the input of your time and resources is essential for achieving leverage, ensuring that every effort is directed toward activities that maximize output.

Use this litmus test:

If you stopped doing this activity tomorrow, would it continue to produce value?

• If yes, it’s high leverage.
• If no, it’s treadmill work.

Prioritize activities that generate the highest return on input to maximize your overall impact.

Key Takeaway: Creating high-leverage activities means focusing your time on tasks that deliver outsized results. Identify activities that keep producing value even if you stop doing them—these are your high-leverage tasks. Prioritize them with dedicated, distraction-free time, and delegate or automate low-value work. Regularly audit your time to stay aligned with top goals. Embrace both strategic and logistical tasks like planning and clear communication to boost effectiveness. Systematize these habits to multiply productivity, reclaim time, and drive real business success.

2. The 21 Highest-Leverage Activities

Below, each of Alex Brogan’s 21 items becomes a playbook card with a short Why It Matters, How to Do It, and Provocative Prompt you can ask yourself.

1. Choosing to Work on the Largest Markets

• Why It Matters: Market size beats everything. Even mediocre execution in a big market can outperform genius in a small one.
• How to Do It: Quantify TAM (Total Addressable Market) with data, not wishful thinking. Use a “pain vs. spend” matrix: is the pain acute and is money already flowing?
• Provocative Prompt: If I succeed wildly here, can this be a $1B+ outcome? If not, why am I here?

2. Hiring Someone to Raise Capital for You

• Why It Matters: Fundraising is a full-time job. You can’t scale product and pitch decks simultaneously.
• How to Do It: Bring in a Head of Capital Markets or a fractional CFO. Align comp with closed dollars, not hours billed.
• Provocative Prompt: Would my pipeline double if I wasn’t the bottleneck?

3. Raising Capital Yourself

• Why It Matters: Investors back founders, not spreadsheets. Your ability to narrate the future is non-delegable at the seed stage.
• How to Do It: Build a “three-act pitch” (problem, inevitability, inevitability with you). Keep one master deck and tailor only the appendix.
• Provocative Prompt: Am I telling a story that makes the investor feel late if they don’t act?

4. Writing Code (or Shipping Product) Early On

• Why It Matters: Early code is a leverage because it’s customer feedback in disguise. You own the learning loop.
• How to Do It: Ship "early", ship "ugly, but ship functional. Automate metrics from day one (usage, churn, etc.).
• Provocative Prompt: Is my coding building moats, or just features?

5. Publishing Media

• Why It Matters: Content scales trust. One great post or video can bring in customers for years.
• How to Do It: Choose one medium (e.g., LinkedIn, Substack, YouTube). Batch create. Repurpose clips.
• Provocative Prompt: Does my content say what only I can say?

6. Hiring Someone Who Can Hire for You

• Why It Matters: Recruiting is exponential. A “bar-raiser” recruiter multiplies your reach.
• How to Do It: Identify “talent magnets” early. Give them equity so they stick. Effective delegation helps team members develop their skills and confidence.
• Provocative Prompt: If I hire this person, will they be able to staff my next 10 hires?

7. Hiring People Directly

• Why It Matters: Early cultural DNA comes from the choices you personally make.
• How to Do It: Interview for slope (learning rate), not just intercept (current skill). Hiring competent team members early is crucial for proper delegation and task management.
• Provocative Prompt: Would I want 10 more of this person?

8. Modelling Expected Behaviours

• Why It Matters: People do what you do, not what you say. Culture is caught, not taught.
• How to Do It: Make your default behaviour visible. Arrive early for customer calls. Take notes in public documents.
• Provocative Prompt: Would I still do this if everyone was watching? (They are.)

9. Aligning the Team Through Clear Metrics

• Why It Matters: Ambiguity kills momentum. Clear metrics act like autopilot.
• How to Do It: Implement a simple OKR dashboard that is visible to all. Tie weekly stand-ups to metrics, not opinions.
• Provocative Prompt: If I went offline for a month, would the team know what “good” looks like?

10. Aligning the Team Through Cultural Expectations

• Why It Matters: Metrics drive what you do; culture drives how you do it.
• How to Do It: Write a one-pager “How We Work” doc. Reinforce it with stories, not slogans.
• Provocative Prompt: Could a new hire describe our culture after 30 days without being told?

11. Rewarding Performance Publicly

• Why It Matters: Public praise is free but has a compounding retention effect.
• How to Do It: Create a #wins Slack channel. Tie bonuses to behaviours, not just outcomes.
• Provocative Prompt: Am I rewarding what I actually want repeated?

12. Improving Cross-Team Communications

• Why It Matters: Silos are startup cancer. Information hoarded = bad judgment multiplied.
• How to Do It: Default to public docs. Institute “Friday Demos,” where teams showcase their work in 5 minutes. Establishing clear communication habits fosters better collaboration and maximizes the use of time.
• Provocative Prompt: Could anyone in the org explain what any other team is doing this week?

13. Nudging & Gathering Information to Inform Good Judgement

• Why It Matters: Great founders are great pollinators. They collect weak signals before they become strong trends.
• How to Do It: Build “listening posts”: customer advisory boards, Slack communities, Twitter lists.
• Provocative Prompt: What am I the earliest to know?

14. Improving Employee Wellbeing

• Why It Matters: Burned-out teams ship bugs and quit. Happy teams ship features and stay.
• How to Do It: Offer flexible schedules, mental health stipends, and “no-meeting” days.
• Provocative Prompt: Would I want my best friend to work here under these conditions?

15. Preparing for Presentations to the Entire Organization

• Why It Matters: All-hands meetings provide a leveraged approach: one hour to align 100 people beats 100 one-on-one meetings.
• How to Do It: Treat it like a mini product launch: visuals, narrative arc, Q&A.
• Provocative Prompt: Will my team leave inspired or confused?

16. Removing Bottlenecks in Systems/Organizational Output

• Why It Matters: A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
• How to Do It: Map workflows visually. Ask, “What’s the slowest step?” and then fix the first bottleneck, before moving to the next one.
• Provocative Prompt: What’s the constraint that, if removed, unlocks 10X throughput?

17. Working with Higher-Paying Customers/Clients

• Why It Matters: Serving customers who pay more creates margin for mistakes and innovation.
• How to Do It: Segment accounts by LTV (lifetime value) and CAC (acquisition cost). Fire the bottom 10%.
• Provocative Prompt: If I only had 10 customers, which 10 would I keep?

18. Creating Onboarding/Training Programs for New Staff

• Why It Matters: Every hour you invest in onboarding saves dozens later. It’s culture, process, and performance in one.
• How to Do It: Record Loom videos of repeat training. Assign a buddy. Test understanding.
• Provocative Prompt: Could a new hire be 80% productive in 30 days without me?

19. Building Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

• Why It Matters: SOPs turn “tribal knowledge” into scalable systems. This is how you stop reinventing the wheel.
• How to Do It: Document the 20% of processes that cause 80% of errors first. Use checklists.
• Provocative Prompt: If we doubled headcount tomorrow, would chaos ensue?

20. Training/Onboarding Staff Members Yourself

• Why It Matters: Your direct involvement with key hires sends a signal: “This matters.”
• How to Do It: Deliver the vision section personally. Delegate the “how” to managers.
• Provocative Prompt: Will this person feel personally connected to the mission?

21. Giving Precise and Candid Feedback to an Individual

• Why It Matters: Feedback is a founder’s highest-ROI management tool. Vague praise = slow death.
• How to Do It: Use SBI (Situation, Behaviour, Impact). Deliver within 24 hours of the event. Feedback should be two-way, allowing team members to share their thoughts and ideas.
• Provocative Prompt: If I were them, would I know exactly how to improve?

3. Time Management for Maximizing Leverage

Think of your calendar as a portfolio. Each block is an “investment.” Some yield 10X returns (hiring a VP Sales). Some yield 0.5X returns (replying to low-priority emails).

Having a structured schedule helps you allocate time to high-leverage activities, ensuring your efforts are focused where they matter most. Rebalance weekly, and intentionally allocate time to the highest-impact activities. High-leverage activities may include logistical tasks such as planning, prioritizing, and coordinating high-impact projects.

Successful time management involves prioritizing tasks based on their potential impact on business growth. Using a calendar to colour-code priorities can help in auditing time spent on key activities and ensure alignment with goals. Remember, you are not managing time itself, but rather managing how you spend your time to maximize results. 

Tactics:

• Leverage AI: There is an abundance of amazing tools that can help you prioritize your work on the highest-leverage activities. Tried Motion. Did not like it. Tried Tanka and Notion and have adopted them. Find what works for you!
• Audit: “Leverage Audit” every Friday. List where your time went; reallocate. Auditing how time is spent against priorities ensures focus on high-output tasks and helps address the ongoing challenge of time management as the company grows.
• Manage Calendar: Pre-book “maker time” for deep work on leverage activities. If using a calendar for booking external meetings, intentionally set the available parameters to the times of your day that do not require deep thinking.
• Automate and Delegate: Never do the things that others (or technology) can do for you! Low-leverage tasks waste time and energy without making a meaningful contribution to success.
• Routines: Utilize routines to significantly reduce cognitive load and enhance productivity by making daily tasks more manageable, particularly when establishing daily habits to support high-leverage work.

Key Takeaway: As the Founder, you must be maniacally focused on prioritizing your time on what truly drives the business forward.

4. Implementing a High-Leverage Strategy

1. Diagnose – Use the 21 activities as a checklist. Score each project 1-5 for current execution, and evaluate which projects are truly high-leverage.
2. Prioritize – Circle the bottom three. Fix them first; they’re your leverage leaks.
3. Systemize – For each improved activity, build a repeatable process. As you systemize, intentionally create high-leverage activities that maximize impact and drive progress across your projects and workflows.
4. Re-assess quarterly – High leverage today may be low leverage tomorrow. Recognize that priorities and leverage shift over time, so it is essential to regularly assess and recalibrate focus on key business activities to ensure effective time management. Creating routines for communication helps in maintaining clarity and alignment within teams. Everyone has the same maximum of 168 hours available each week.

Quick Self-Assessment Matrix

5. The Futurist Lens: Where Leverage Is Heading

The world of entrepreneurship is rapidly changing as new leverage tools transform how businesses operate and grow.

• AI as Multiplicative Force: Generative AI can draft SOPs, auto-summarize meetings, and pre-screen candidates: shifting more activities into the “high leverage” zone. New high-leverage activities are being created in the business world as AI enables founders to design processes that intentionally drive growth and efficiency.
• Asynchronous > Synchronous: A remote-first culture makes public documents and recorded updates the default. This will raise the leverage of good documentation and lower the leverage of endless meetings. Limiting meetings is crucial to maintaining a productive work culture.
• Reputation Graphs: Publishing media (personal + corporate) will compound as talent marketplaces rank founders by visible thought leadership. A founder's website is an essential resource and point of contact, further amplifying their reputation. The most productive teams often collaborate asynchronously to reduce the number of meetings.

Conclusion: Your Personal Leverage Flywheel

When you consistently choose high-leverage activities, you build a flywheel:

Hire smarter → free your time → publish more → attract better talent/investors → repeat.

A great leader is only involved in the highest-leverage activities, delegating lower-impact tasks to others to maximize results.

Start small: pick three of the 21 activities to improve this month. Focusing on these will help you achieve your goals more efficiently and as each becomes a habit, layer on the next. Effective time management requires prioritizing and focusing on key tasks as the company scale increases. For example, investing time in automating repetitive processes or recruiting top talent can yield significant results, such as faster growth and increased productivity.

In 12 months, you’ll look back and realize you’re running the same company—but with 10X the output and 1/10th the chaos. The difference between founders who invest in high-leverage activities and those who do not is clear: those who do achieve greater impact with less effort.

One-Page Cheat Sheet

Provocative Closing Thought:
“You don’t rise to the level of your ambition; you fall to the level of your systems.”
Your job as founder is to build systems that do the heavy lifting so you can focus on the few moves that change the game.