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Read More →Leadership📅 March 28, 2024⏱ 7 min read
3 Essential Types of Work to Stop Your Business from Stalling
SM
Sturdy McKeeYour business is stalling. You're working harder than ever, but growth has plateaued. Sound familiar?
After two decades of scaling businesses and coaching hundreds of leaders, I've identified a pattern: businesses stall when leaders get trapped in the wrong type of work. They're busy, but they're not productive. They're working in their business instead of on it.
The solution isn't working more hours. It's understanding and balancing three essential types of work.
Type 1: Operational Work — The Engine
This is the day-to-day work that keeps your business running. Customer service, fulfilling orders, managing staff, handling crises. It's essential, but it's also a trap.
The Trap
Most business owners spend 80–90% of their time here. The business runs, but it doesn't grow. And if you step away for a week, everything falls apart.
The Key
Operational work should be systematized, delegated, and optimized — not personally executed by you every day.
Type 2: Development Work — The Engine Builder
Development work is about building and improving your business systems, processes, and team. It's working on your business instead of in it.
The Trap
This is where most business owners are chronically underinvested. They're so busy running the business that they never have time to improve it. But without development work, you're running on an engine that never gets maintained.
The Key
Development work should consume at least 20% of your leadership time. This is where your leverage lives.
Type 3: Strategic Work — The Navigator
Strategic work is about setting direction — where is your business going, why, and how will you get there? It's the visioning, planning, and decision-making that determines whether all that operational and development effort is pointed in the right direction.
The Trap
When strategic work gets crowded out by operational demands, businesses drift. They work hard but in random directions. Without strategic clarity, development investments get wasted and operations stay busy without purpose.
The Key
Even 5–10% of your time dedicated to genuine strategic thinking will dramatically improve the quality of your business decisions.
What the Right Balance Looks Like
- Operational Work: 60–70% — Necessary, but systematized and delegated as much as possible
- Development Work: 20–30% — Building systems, developing your team, improving processes
- Strategic Work: 5–10% — Direction-setting, vision, key decisions
How to Shift the Balance
- Block time for development work. Schedule it like a patient appointment. If it's not on the calendar, it won't happen.
- Identify one operational task to systematize this week. Document the process and test it with someone on your team.
- Protect at least one hour per week for strategic thinking. No emails, no interruptions. Just you and the big picture.
- Track how you're spending your time. You can't manage what you don't measure. A simple time log for two weeks will reveal where you're over-indexed.
The Bottom Line
The reason most businesses stall isn't a lack of effort. It's a lack of balance across these three essential types of work.
When you're trapped in operational work, you're running fast on a treadmill. When you invest in development and strategic work, you're building a road to somewhere worth going.
"Your business doesn't need you to work harder. It needs you to work differently."
Ready to Stop Being the Bottleneck?
If you're ready to stop being the bottleneck in your business and start working on the things that truly drive growth, I'd love to help.
SM
About Sturdy McKee
Sturdy McKee is the founder of Sturdy Coaching, LLC, and creator of The 6-Hour CEO™ approach. With two decades of experience scaling and selling a six-location physical therapy practice, Sturdy helps business owners transform from being the hardest-working player in their business to becoming its confident coach and strategist.
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