Your Team Has More Capacity Than You Think
Why effective leaders multiply existing strengths instead of defaulting to more headcount
When your team’s workload grows, what’s your first thought? I need to hire more people? or How can I better use what I already have?
A couple years ago a colleague led a book discussion around Multipliers, which sparked some great discussion. One quote that still resonates with me:
Better leverage and utilization of resources at the organizational level require adopting a new corporate logic, based on multiplication. Instead of achieving linear growth by adding new resources, leaders rooted in the logic of multiplication believe that you can more efficiently extract the capability of your people and watch growth skyrocket by multiplying the power of the resources you have.
Here is the logic behind multiplication:
Most people in organizations are underutilized.
All capability can be leveraged with the right kind of leadership.
Therefore, intelligence and capability can be multiplied without requiring a bigger investment.
Many leaders approach performance through addition. They believe that when a problem grows, the only real solution is to add more bodies, more budget, or more directives. On the surface this looks reasonable, but it blinds them to the biggest source of leverage they already have.
Multiplier leaders do something entirely different. They invest time in understanding the natural strengths of each person. They challenge teams in ways that stretch ability instead of breaking confidence. They hand over ownership in a way that develops autonomy rather than dependency. And they are consistently spotting, challenging and correcting inefficiencies in a department.
When this happens, people stop waiting for answers and start generating them. Intelligence compounds. Capacity expands without hiring a single additional person. What looked like a resource issue is revealed to be a leadership issue.
One of the greatest competitive advantages today isn’t throwing more bodies at the problem. It’s multiplying the talent you already have.