On Leverage: 1 Move That Turns Your Work Into an Operating System
Move 2 in the On Leverage Series
Good leaders deliver value.
Great leaders design systems and teams that amplify impact.
In our first article On Leverage, we explored how elite performers escape overload by shrinking their zone of responsibility to protect their highest-value work.
Now we dive deeper to how top performers multiply what works.
Most professionals create outputs once. Strategic leaders create repeatability and scale their impact.
The fastest way to gain leverage?
Stop doing and start codifying.
Why This Matters
While consulting for a technology client, my team was asked to address a recurring challenge around vendor evaluations.
On the surface, it looked like a bandwidth issue. There were high-stakes criteria, complex vendor outputs, and too few people to evaluate them.
But the real constraint wasn’t resources or time, it was the absence of a system to guide decisions and compare options.
So we captured their best thinking and built a tool the team could run end-to-end without requiring the leader’s input at every step. It improved speed, consistency, and decision quality.
Evaluations were faster, clearer, and better aligned, freeing up executive time for where it mattered most.
That’s the upside of leverage: not just time saved, but intelligence multiplied.
Move 2: Turn One-Offs Into Operating Systems
What Most People Do
They solve problems in the moment.
The work gets done, but they miss the opportunity to extract learning, spot patterns, or improve how it’s done next time.
What Top Performers Do
They turn work outputs into operating systems.
They capture what works, codify and share it.
This works because it gives leaders visibility without needing to be involved at every stage.
A bonus: it trains the team to operate at a higher level.
Your Move
Pick one task you do repeatedly e.g., vendor evaluations, hiring screening questions, OKR read outs, decision memos.
Then ask ChatCOS
“Help me turn this into a repeatable tool for my team. Include criteria, steps, and usage guidance.”
Pro Move
I use this exact approach to scale strategic impact, by turning high-quality thinking into tools that others can use.
Grant AI helps teams evaluate funding opportunities with consistency and speed.
ChatCOS helps me, other Chiefs of Staff, and leadership produce high impact deliverables at the right altitude.
Here’s the question to ask every time you solve something:
What part of this solution could become a standard, template, or tool for others to use without me in the loop?
That’s the power of leverage: codify once, and scale your impact on autopilot.
What’s Next
Freeing up time and building systems is leverage.
But next-level leaders know how to scale themselves through others.
📩 Move 3 drops next week. Stay tuned.
Go for it!
Joselle
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