Leadership Strategy & Performance
Why Strategy Time Should be your Priority
Published Guide updated 2 min 52 sec
Sharon argues that the leaders she studies treat thinking time as a diary appointment, not a leftover. She cites Jeff Weiner’s daily block, Warren Buffett’s sparse calendar, and Charlie Munger’s line that next Tuesday might only say “haircut.” Her invitation is to start with fifteen minutes and protect it.
Executive Summary
Key Takeaways
- Strategy time has to be booked before the day fills itself.
- Buffett and Weiner protected thinking time throughout their careers, not only once they had room for it.
- An hour at home, in a café, or with a journal still counts.
- Leaders who try half an hour usually come back wanting more.
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Edited Transcript
Sharon says the successful CEOs and leaders she points clients to make thinking time, or strategy time, non-negotiable in the diary. Jeff Weiner, then CEO of LinkedIn, spent a minimum of two hours a day in uninterrupted thinking. Warren Buffett, she notes, has said he spends about eighty per cent of his time thinking, and he did that from the start of his career, not only once the money made it easy.
Charlie Munger, Buffett’s partner for more than forty years, is her source for the diary test: look at what Warren is doing next Tuesday and you may only find a haircut. The calendar stays clear because the insights and the strategy come from the thinking, not from a fuller schedule. She also points to another of her videos on sleep: Buffett would send people home to rest if he wanted them at their best.
She asks clients to block strategy time first, ideally in the morning before the day gets ahead of them. If the office interrupts, do it at home, or stop at a café with a pen and a journal, or read something useful before work. People who say they do not have an hour are asked to try thirty minutes. They usually return saying thirty is not enough. If even that will not fit, start with fifteen, in the morning or elsewhere in the day. The white space, she says, is where the better ideas and the better decisions come from.
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