It’s Time to Lead: How to Scale Influence by Creating Leadership Space
Part 1 of 3: Delegation Architecture for High-Impact Leadership
Leadership is NOT about doing more. Not more meetings. Not more deliverables. Not more decisions. Leadership IS about designing your delegation and ownership architectures to enable you and your team to go faster with higher quality execution.
In this 3-part Lead Time Series, my goal is to unpack how top leaders create the space and time to think, to make faster and higher quality decisions, and to increase their influence while scaling themselves, their teams, and their company.
Bottom lines?
You can’t lead if you’re buried.
You can’t think if you’re rushed.
You can’t influence if you’re reacting.
Creating what I call “Leadership Time” is required. It’s hard to make this shift. Everything seems so urgent and important right now. You were likely put into this leadership role because you out-executed others and GSD (got stuff done). But as a leader of a team and especially as a leader of a company, the success game changes. You must be a minimum of 12 months ahead of your team and your company. 18 months would be even better. Your direct reports (VPs or Directors) should be 6-12 months ahead and your staff should be 3-6 months ahead.
There are significant risks of not operating “into the future” and working backwards and only operating in today’s reactive state.
Inside this 3 part series:
Delegation Architecture: specific frameworks to design ownership, decision rights, and creating a risk score to enable you to delegate tasks.
Time Architecture: how to structure your calendar for strategic leadership.
Focus Architecture: how to manage your time, your team’s time, and your company’s time and treat focus and attention like capital.
Each post includes actionable frameworks and strategic checklists. Let’s jump in.
As we begin Part 1, here’s a key framing as you start thinking about making this shift.
Creating the proper space and time for proper leadership doesn’t just happen one day.
It’s not bought by hiring people.
It’s designed, communicated, and executed.
And it must start with YOU.
Part 1: Delegation Architecture & Designing Ownership
"Leadership Without Thinking Time Isn’t Leadership"
If you don’t create your own leadership space for quality thinking time, you’re not leading. You are managing. Without quality thinking time, there is no way you can be strategic and design your team’s future success.
Creating this “lead time” is what separates high-influence leaders from executional leaders.
So, here’s my ask. This week, focus on starting to create this space, this time to think. Don’t just jump into the next task to get it off your plate.
In part 1, this post, I’m going to get into how to do this by:
Mastering the Risk Curve of Delegation
Structuring Ownership
Post 2 (Next Week) - Time Architecture: Designing Your Calendar for Strategic Influence
Main Ideas:
Auditing your current calendar: "Strategy Time vs Manager Time"
Protecting Strategic Blocks: Focus Fridays, AM Strategic Blocks
Installing "Leadership Space Buffers" before/after big decisions
Creating "No Meeting Zones" for thinking work
Post 3 (2 weeks from now) - Focus Architecture: Protecting Deep Focus in a World of Distraction
Main Ideas:
Identifying Distraction Traps (Slack, Email, Meetings)
Building Daily Focus Rituals (First 90 Minutes, Deep Work Sprints)
Teaching Your Team to Protect Their Own Focus
As you move up the leadership ranks (CFO, COO, CEO) your ability to create leadership space becomes the determining factor in your success.
Without space, you're trapped in reaction mode. With space and time to truly think from a future state to the current state, you are much more effective and influential as a leader.
This “lead time” - the buffer between what’s urgent and what’s important - is where your true leadership influence is forged.
Bottom line: You can’t create leadership space without mastering leadership delegation.
PART 1:
Creating Space to Think and Influence
Leadership space isn’t a luxury… it’s one of your most strategic personal assets.
You need space to:
Think about emerging priorities and risks.
Decide and execute with clear communications.
Influence across the company and externally with stakeholders.
Without this kind of space, you’re just managing your inbox. With this kind of thinking space, you can begin to shape the future.
Creating space is itself a leadership act. It signals that you’ve built a team capable of running your operating machine without your constant intervention.
Two Key Frameworks To Focus On:
1. The Risk Curve of Delegation
Early in Cook’s PlayBooks, I introduced the concept of the Risk Curve — the idea that as you delegate, risk initially increases before it decreases.
At first, delegation feels riskier and slower.
It feels like you could do it faster and better.
And you probably can… and unfortunately you do.
Leadership Space Rule #1: You must properly delegate to create long-term leadership leverage.
Great leaders play at the right level on the risk curve and significantly reduce risk over time.
True leadership delegation requires accepting the initial risk premium. Over time, with coaching and trust, your team’s ownership compounds, and the risk curve drops dramatically.
How to Apply It:
Identify 2–3 areas where you’ve held back delegation out of fear.
Accept the short-term risk and delegate it.
Gain the reward of having the time back of not doing that task and now only having to “review the person’s results” and coach the person you delegated the task to. This is the beginning of true leadership.
Track progress of the outcomes you’ve delegated. You will find your perceived risk declines over time if you stay involved and provide the proper coaching leadership vs “doing leadership”. You may find that roommate in your head saying “I should have done this months ago”. No better time than the present.
Bottom line: Risks and rewards are always connected. Play on the proper spot on your personal risk curve and gain the leadership time back with your new “thinking space” rewards.
“Delegation without Risk is Delegation without Growth.”
Delegation without Risk is Lose-Lose.
You don’t grow (You Lose). The person you SHOULD BE delegating to ALSO does NOT Grow (Also Loses).
2. Structure Ownership, Not Just Tasks
When you delegate tasks, you save some time. When you delegate ownership, you compound capacity.
Ownership delegation requires:
Clear definition of what success looks like.
Mutual agreement of guardrails and decision rights.
Transparent risk escalation paths.
A well-structured team owns outcomes, not tasks.
Leadership Space Rule #2: Delegate outcomes with clear expectations. Do NOT delegate activities/tasks and then micromanage the person. This is simply now 2 people doing the same task. You must “Let Go To Lead”.
Playbook in Practice
Ask yourself weekly: Am I creating enough lead time to lead?
What should only I be doing?
What is still in my hands that should be in someone else's?
Where am I preventing my team from truly owning outcomes?
Where am I micromanaging risk instead of coaching through it?
5 Warning Signs You’ve Lost Your Leadership Space
1. You’re the default decision-maker on everything.
If every escalation ends with you, you’ve become the bottleneck — not the architect.
2. Your calendar is wall-to-wall meetings.
No strategic time blocks = no strategic output.
3. You’re still doing what others should own.
Reviewing spreadsheets, rewriting team slides, chasing status updates — instead of designing systems that remove the need for “you.” I know you “know” this and your head is nodding. I also know many of you still haven’t started down the path of doing what you know you should be doing.
4. You're solving the same problems every week.
Recurring fire drills mean your team lacks ownership or guardrails.
5. You have no time to think.
When your week has no whitespace, your leadership shrinks to inbox and slack or calendar meeting hell.
Task Delegation vs. Ownership Delegation: How to Make the Shift
Problem:
Most leaders delegate tasks, not ownership. That feels efficient but it creates dependency.
Task Delegation =
"Send this report."
"Check in on this deal."
"Run the meeting."
Ownership Delegation =
"Own the quarterly insights pipeline. Ensure reporting, analysis, and recommendations are delivered by this date."
"Be accountable for new sales process implementation by November 15."
"I need you to run our weekly cross-team meetings. This means establishing and reviewing the agenda with me, moderating the meeting, and actioning the follow ups from the meeting with the right communications to everyone."
How to Shift:
Define success clearly. What’s the outcome, not the steps?
Set boundaries. What are the non-negotiables?
Clarify decision rights. Where and when can they decide? When must they escalate back to you?
Coach the game-plan. Review Results. Coach the Adjustments. But absolutely do NOT micromanage. Delegation by micromanaging is not delegation and it’s not giving ownership.
Celebrate ownership and the great outcomes. Recognize and reward. This will cement the ownership of that thing you previously owned. For your best people, it will also compound their desire to run through the next wall for you (and with you).
In Summary:
Scaling yourself isn’t about working harder and creating daily to do lists and getting stuff done.
It’s about creating leadership space. It’s designing and architecting ownership and delegation. It’s working from a future state of required outcomes backwards to your current state and using your influence to help unblock and resource the step-by-step success milestones to achieve your desired future state.
Create the space and time to lead and you will create the space and time to be highly influential to both your team and your company.
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