Leadership Minute: You Need A Zero-Based Commitment Strategy

To make your life more manageable, start from zero and add things back

Does your schedule feel like a hopeless juggling act? Are you tired of answering “busy” when people ask how you are doing?

The feeling of having too much on your plate is especially common for leaders. As you take on more responsibility and make bigger contributions, you’ll inevitably have more people competing for your time. You have more direct-reports and longer, more strategic meetings. You’re also likely involved in a couple community organizations outside of work. And, needless to say, if you’re also a parent, there’s probably not enough time in the day for everything and everyone.

I’ve met a ton of leaders who have an unsustainable amount on their plate; I have also been that type of leader myself. And the most effective solution I’ve found for this is a simple one: a zero-based commitment strategy.

A zero-based commitment strategy uses the same logic as a zero-based budgeting strategy. Zero-based budgeting is an increasingly popular tactic where a company or finance leader directs department heads to start from zero when building budgets for a new fiscal year, rather than entering using the previous year’s budget as a starting point. This approach is effective in budgeting because it helps people reassess things that aren’t delivering value rather than maintaining costs from previous year because they are there already. This in turn opens budget for new initiatives, hires and other investments.

A zero-based commitment strategy applies that approach to personal and professional engagements. It requires you to consider starting from zero and stopping something you would not start doing today if given the choice.

Here’s how it works in practice.

First, write down all your existing commitments, breaking them into three buckets: projects, recurring long-term commitments such as a board seat, and relationships. For each one, answer the following questions: