REPLAY: When You Have a Math Problem, Solve It With Math

🌟 While we no longer record the Q&A discussions during our Leadership Strategy Sessions, we continue to record the opening teaching. Enjoy a special preview of what I shared about navigating October’s math problem. If you want to see the complete teaching and take part in upcoming sessions, consider upgrading to join us live next month.

---

What makes October uniquely challenging isn’t a motivation problem — it’s a math problem.

When you line up your strategic projects against your team’s actual capacity, the numbers don’t work. Even at 100% capacity, even with perfect alignment, there’s still too much. As I’ve said on the personal productivity side, I’ll say on the team side:

You cannot put 14 units of work into a 10-unit bag.

When you have a math problem, you need to solve it with math.

Here’s how you can help your team protect what matters most:

Don’t get project locked. Just because you committed to something in May doesn’t mean it’s still the highest-impact work in October. Ask: given where we are today, against our key results, what efforts make the most sense to prioritize now?

Give your team permission to release. Without explicit permission, teams keep working on what you asked for months ago, even when it’s no longer the right priority.

Adjust your conversation cadence. You don’t have time for drift in October. More frequent check-ins aren’t micromanaging but instead create space to ask: “What have you driven forward? What do we need to reprioritize so you can stay focused?”

This month’s Q&A also covered:

• Strategic timing decisions: Evaluating tradeoffs between acting now versus waiting

• The green line myth: Why we chase impossible perfect scenarios instead of working with reality

• Leading through chaos: Presenting realistic visions to boards during organizational turbulence

• Planning leadership transitions: Protecting team capacity while ensuring continuity

One thing I often do during these sessions is share frameworks I’m actively developing. This month, attendees got a sneak peek at new thinking around the green line myth and why we chase impossible perfect scenarios. (More on this in an upcoming post.)

Our next Leadership Strategy Session will be on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 11:00 a.m. PST, where we’ll tackle Leading Through Compression — how to stay responsive when you have three usable weeks and everything from Q3 is suddenly back on your desk.

Premium subscribers can watch the full opening teaching and access below 👇🏽 all related resources shared during the call.