Scaling Yourself: How To Create Leverage That Lasts

The more senior you get, the less your impact comes from what you do—and more from what you cause to happen. That’s leverage.

Leverage is how great leaders scale. But how do you actually build it into your day? How do you track it? Improve it? Teach it to others?

This is the second post in my series on leverage. If you haven’t read the first one — where I define what leverage means in a leadership context — start here. Subscribe if you’d like to follow along as I explore this in real time.

My First Attempt at Leverage

I like to move fast. Once I defined the concept of leverage, my first instinct was: “Great—how do I apply this now?”

In my earlier post about wellbeing, a reader named Matteo shared his system: quarterly goals tied to health, sleep, and productivity. Bingo - what gets measured gets done!

So I added a new section to my weekly reflection doc: “Leverage”. (I’ve shared my weekly planning process here). Each week, I started listing moments where I had multiplied my impact:

• Explaining the “why” behind a task so others can act independently

• Communicating one-to-many via meetings or emails

• Influencing senior leaders

• Delegating work thoughtfully

That first week? One example of each. Modest beginnings — but we all have to start somewhere.

The Layers of Leverage

As I dug deeper, I began to see that leverage is not one-dimensional. It has layers—just like ogres and onions.

Layer one is direct impact with a future benefit. Teaching someone what “good” looks like, for example, means next time they’ll do better without you. That’s leverage (credit to my husband for this insight).

Layer two is about systems. During a session with my coach (Coach Gruber, and if you are looking for a coach he is awesome), I realised I was spending time giving individual feedback—but that feedback was fixing symptoms, not causes. True leverage would be improving the process that created the error. Joel Spolsky calls this “fix it two ways”. I knew this in a program management context, but hadn’t been applying it to other situations.

How do I fix the process upstream? Amazon uses 5 why’s in a Correction Of Error (COE) process that makes you go deep and fix problems with tech. But this is too heavy for my team. So instead, I’m falling in love with checklists, SOPs, and tenets (The Checklist Manifesto and Thinking in Systems are great books if you want to go deeper).

Layer three is culture. When you shape culture, you start scaling without needing to be present.

This is what that looks like in action.

From Delegation to Culture

Say your boss asks, “Can you cover for me in a review tomorrow?” You agree, reshuffle your day, attend the meeting, maybe ping them afterward. That’s delegation — low effort, simple leverage. It works.

Now imagine this version.

Two meeting invites appear in my diary. One is a meeting itself at 4pm, the other is titled **Key callouts to <VP name> ** “Name of the meeting” at 6pm. In the first meeting I am listed as VP proxy. In the second invite I have a crisp instruction list.

“You stand in for <Our Organisation> for the meeting in the subject line. Please send the key callouts to <VP> by the end of the same day as the meeting. Reply All to this invite and add <VP> name into the To line. Keep VP Assistant, VP Chief of Staff and your assistant on cc.

Please include:

1. General decisions being made

2. Anything that impacts <Our Organisation>

3. Add your comments on follow ups

Please only note down the key callouts which are relevant for <Our Organisation>. <VP> needs to be up to date on the main meeting points”.

Now, this is not just a task. It’s a mission. My skip-level boss—who leads hundreds of thousands of people—has trusted me to represent him. I prepare, I ask his Chief of Staff for context, I read past QBR document.

In the meeting, once reading time is finished, I turn my camera on. I ask a thoughtful question. Now I am in the game. The owner of the meeting knows I am the VP proxy and I am present, so when discussion shifts to something that touches my org, they ask for my opinion.

After the meeting, I type up a concise summary and send the note. Now VP assistant will consolidate all such notes and send it to him by the end of the day, so that he can be on top of whatever is happening.

How do I feel after this? I have earned trust. I learnt something new. I have shown up in front of senior stakeholders. I helped my VP scale.

That’s not just delegation. That’s culture of scale.

Shifting Gears: My Second Attempt

After five weeks of tracking leverage weekly, I had six solid examples — delegation, feedback, praise, process improvements. I saw my team starting to scale their own impact.

Progress. But something still felt off.

Reflecting on this in a coaching session, I had two realisations: (1) I was only looking backwards. (2) My cadence was too slow — weekly wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t thrilled about adding another daily task to my plate, but I committed to trying it.

I carved out a short daily slot to reflect: How much of my day was spent on leverage? How can I build more into tomorrow?

Day one: Just 30 minutes of leveraged time — writing a one-to-many email. The rest was 1:1s, interviews, and meetings. Important work, yes — but not scalable.

It was March at Amazon—feedback season. That means hours of writing thoughtful evaluations and having 1:1s to deliver them. High-value work for personal growth—but not leverage in the short term.

In fact, feedback once led a team member to realize they wanted a different career path. Great for them — but I had to rehire and retrain. That’s the paradox of leadership: sometimes you trade short-term efficiency for long-term fulfilment.

By the first week’s end, I was consistently spending 2–2.5 hours per day on leveraged activities. Daily reflection helped.

I’m sticking with it for now — and I’ll share what I learn in the future post.

Your Turn

Thanks for reading! It feels strange to practice a skill in public — I have more questions than answers myself — but it’s helping me to stay on track. And I hope it sparks something useful for you, too!

What did you do last week to scale better?
What’s one way you created impact beyond your direct effort?

Tell me in the comments — or try tracking your own leverage for five days. I’d love to hear what you learn.