Brian Nichols

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The most dangerous trap in a growing company is the "busy-ness" of the middle.

When you start, you do everything because you have to. When you're huge, you have systems for everything. But in the middle, you have just enough success to be overwhelmed and not quite enough structure to stay sane.

I spent the last week looking at our internal workflows for the new platform launch.

What I found was a lot of smart people doing things that didn't need to be done. We were over-complicating the reporting because we were afraid of missing a metric. We were holding three meetings for a decision that required one person and a Slack message.

We were confusing activity with progress.

The fix wasn't a new software tool or a more detailed spreadsheet. It was a return to the phase objective: get the product in the hands of the suppliers.

If a task didn't directly shorten the distance between the code and the customer, we cut it. It felt uncomfortable. It felt like we were being "unprofessional" by ignoring the standard corporate checklists.

But the result was a 30% increase in velocity in four days.

The lesson is simple: your job isn't to be busy. Your job is to be effective.

What's the one thing on your calendar today that feels urgent but isn't actually moving the needle?

#leadership #startups #productivity #focus #ceo

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