Who Can Be You?

Your goal is to do less.

Since the dawn of civilization, we’ve collectively put our minds to the task of how to do less and accomplish more. The wheel and the fulcrum turn a smaller amount of physical power into a greater amount of output. And from there, we kept going.

The amount of civilization we’ve built around us is literally impossible with simply the physical capacity of our bodies. But we didn’t stop there – we designed mental fulcrums as well. Calculators and computers and sundials and even the written word were all ways of magnifying our mental output. Those are tangible, but organizational systems might be even more important. Ten smart people with no way to organize their combined efforts won’t have anywhere near as much impact as the same ten people with the right frameworks.

So the right inter-social frameworks are emotional fulcrums. They let groups do more, with less.

That’s your goal as a leader – how can you hold fewer tasks directly, but magnify the impact of your group more?

To start, remove your ego. The group doesn’t depend on you. It depends on systems. The skills you have, if you’re trying to amplify a group, are actually in the worst place if they’re only in your head. Your goal is to get them into everyone else’s.

Who else can do what you did before? Who can you train, or simply empower, to take over those tasks so you can amplify the results in another way? Don’t look at your people like cats to be herded. Look at them like a vast untapped source of potential, waiting only for the right fulcrum to release them.