How to Become a 10x Executive

Picture Abraham Lincoln, deep in the Illinois wilderness, spending the better part of a morning sharpening his axe before felling a single tree. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree," he allegedly said, "and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

This story, perhaps apocryphal, illuminates a pattern I've observed with many new executives and leaders. The most capable, hardworking people often struggle to make the leap from individual contributor to executive. They become so consumed by immediate operational demands that they never create the systems, teams, and processes that would multiply their effectiveness. They're essentially choosing arithmetic progression over geometric growth.

Consider a recent example from one of my portfolio companies. A new executive, bright and dedicated, delayed hiring a key role for six months. The reasoning? They needed to focus on the "more pressing" problems right in front of them. Today, that same executive is dealing with mounting technical debt and product delays that could have been avoided. The irony is that by trying to save time in Q1, they created exponentially more work for their Q3 self (and their team).

This isn't a byproduct of laziness or lack of vision. These executives often work harder than almost anyone I know. But they're optimizing for personal productivity rather than organizational capacity. They're confusing motion with progress, personal effort with organizational impact.

Why Smart People Make This Mistake

We might ask whether this pattern emerges from the very character traits that made these executives successful in the first place. The best individual contributors solve problems through personal excellence. They stay late, work weekends, and push through obstacles with sheer determination. This approach works brilliantly when you're only responsible for your own output. However, it tends to fail catastrophically when you're responsible for an organization's output.

Many successful executives come from modest backgrounds where self-reliance was both a virtue and a necessity. I recognize this in myself. For years, I resisted hiring a housekeeper because "I can clean my own house." The mental calculation seemed simple: why pay someone $200 to do what I can do myself? But this framing reveals the core fallacy. The question isn't whether you can do something. The question is whether you should.

At a certain level of responsibility, every hour spent on tasks that others could handle is an hour stolen from work that only you can do. That $200 housekeeper isn't a luxury; it's an investment that buys back 4 hours of time that you could invest in more strategically valuable work that could potentially produce thousands of dollars in value. Yet many executives can't make this mental shift. They see delegation as weakness rather than multiplication.

The executives who struggle with creating strategic leverage tend to build organizations that mirror their own limitations. They create cultures of heroic individual effort rather than systematic effectiveness. They hire people who work hard rather than people who work smart. Most dangerously, they are unknowingly modeling behavior for others that could keep their organizations from scaling effectively as they grow.

The math here is unforgiving. Here's the leverage equation:

• A leader at 100% capacity = 1x output

• A leader at 80% capacity with 10x strategic leverage = 8x output

That's 8x the impact while working less. This is how small startups grow into major companies while their founders maintain sanity and strategic focus.

The best executives actually work less hours as their companies grow because they are masters at creating strategic leverage. As a result, they spend their time focused on more high value, strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down in the weeds of running the business.

The 120% Investment Principle

None of this is to say that building leverage is easy or comfortable. The number one excuse I hear from new leaders is "I just don't have time to do XYZ…" They are fully in firefighting mode and are focused on the tasks right in front of them, rather than the longer term.

To create strategic leverage, you often must temporarily work much harder than you otherwise would. It requires what I call the 120% Investment Principle. Yes, you need to maintain current operations. But you need to simultaneously build future capacity by investing in the systems and processes that compound your effectiveness over time.

This is where many executives falter. They see the choice as binary: either handle today's urgencies or invest in tomorrow's systems. The reality, particularly in early-stage companies, demands both. You might spend 50 hours per week on immediate necessities, then another 20 hours (nights and weekends) building the hiring pipelines, documenting processes, building systems, and increasing team capabilities that will eventually eliminate half of those tasks that take up some much of your time today.

The successful executives I've worked with understand this isn't a sacrifice but rather an investment. Every hour spent interviewing candidates, writing process documentation, or training team members is purchasing future time at a favorable exchange rate. They're essentially arbitraging their own future capacity.

The executive who can do this well might work 70 or 80 hours a week early on, but eventually end up working 30 hours a week and being exponentially more valuable to their company than the person who is working hard but not creating strategic leverage. That’s because they can spend those 30 hours a week on really valuable, strategic tasks that create tremendous value for the company.

It's no different than choosing to focus on building up your personal savings when you're young so that you can retire in comfort when you're old.

Breaking Free from Linear Thinking

So how do we recognize and escape from the behaviors that keep us from creating strategic leverage for ourselves? 

Track Your Time: First, we must make the invisible visible. Track your time for two weeks. Categorize every task: "Only I can do this" versus "Someone else could do this with proper training." The results will likely shock you. Most executives discover they're spending 60-70% of their time on tasks that could be delegated.

Think in 10x Terms: Adopt what I call the 10x Framework. Before tackling any task, ask yourself: "If our company were 10x larger, would I still be doing this?" If the answer is no, you've identified a potential leverage opportunity.

Invest in You: This one is surprisingly hard for most self-made people. But you must be willing to invest in yourself. If you want to become the best at what you do, then you must be willing to invest both your time and your own money in making yourself a 10x executive. Hire that housekeeper, get a nanny for the kids, set aside time at night or on the weekends to focus solely on the tasks that create strategic leverage for you.

Create Forcing Functions: Once you've started doing the activities that create strategic leverage, you can hold yourself accountable by setting personal productivity targets that are mathematically impossible without leverage. For example, commit to your stakeholders that you'll double revenue while reducing your weekly hours from 70 to 50. Tell your team you're taking a two-week vacation in six months with zero contact - and then ensure you’re building the leverage that allows you to do so without things blowing up.

The Future You're Creating

Perhaps most importantly, we must reconceptualize what executive success looks like. The hero executive who personally saves every crisis is actually a failure of leadership. The invisible executive whose organization runs smoothly in their absence has achieved true success. This requires humility, patience, and a fundamental shift in identity from "doer" to "enabler."

The executives who grasp this concept early in their careers create a compounding advantage that becomes insurmountable over time. They're the ones who can scale from leading teams of 10 to organizations of 10,000 without burning out. They're the ones who have time for strategic thinking while their peers are drowning in operational details. Most importantly, they're the ones who build organizations that can outlast and outgrow their founders.

The choice we face as leaders is simple but certainly not easy. We can continue to chop trees with dull axes, priding ourselves on our blistered hands and exhausted bodies. Or we can invest the time to sharpen our tools, build better systems, and create leverage that transforms effort into exponential impact.

Getting Started

If you're ready to break free from the linear thinking trap, here's where to start: This week, block out 2 hours on your calendar. During that time, list every recurring task you do. Next to each one, write either "Only I can do this" or "Someone else could do this." Pick the biggest time-consuming task from the "someone else" column and commit to delegating or systematizing it within 30 days.

This single action won't transform you into a 10x executive overnight. But it will begin the compound effect that separates good executives from great ones. Every hour you invest in building leverage today is an hour that will pay dividends for years to come.

The question isn't whether you have time to build systems.

The question is whether you have time NOT to.