Regardless of your job, your boss, or the company you are working for, as a leader there is one rule that you can use to fly to the top. Even if you currently feel trapped or wasted in the middle of a organization, applying the ’30:30:30:10 Rule’ will allow you to break free, while giving you some amazing business and personal leadership experiences. The risk? In some companies it could get you fired, and this is what once happened to me…

So What Is The 30:30:30:10 Rule?

The rule sets out your mindset, focus and how you should use your time if you work in a company:

Do your basic job really well in just 30% of your time
Dedicate 30% of your time partnering with selected players in your organization and creating a tribe
Spend 30% of your time in the CEO’s shoes and becoming his or her confidant
That still leaves 10% of your working life to have fun!
The First 30: Do Your Basic Job Really Well In Just 30% Of Your Time

Your first priority in any job is to deliver on your specific responsibilities and objectives. This means beating expectations, metrics and goals, as this is what most companies’ systems measure. It also means beating your boss’s expectations and ensuring that they benefit from your efforts too.

This clearly requires that you work super-productively. The key to pulling it off is to build a system that involves getting only brilliant people around you, giving them early responsibility, mentoring them and holding them to account on delivery, so you can keep an oversight and guide when required. In return, you push for them when it comes to appraisals and pay rounds.

This may be the hardest part of the rule to apply successfully – particularly in the early stages of your leadership journey – and for some, spending only 30% of your time here may be more of an aspiration rather than a reality. However, don’t get too hung up on the exact percentage; rather see this as a mindset to adopt.

The Second 30: Connect With The Leaders In Your Organization & Create A Tribe

When you join the company make it your business to connect with your peers. Then choose five or six people from outside your area who you are consciously going to work with. They need to be organizational high-performers and shapers – they should have shared values, and while it helps if you like them, you must able to trust them.

Work with these people to build value in the company together. Rising tides lift all ships, and the higher the quality of the peer group, the more you impact you have and the more you will learn from each other.”

Also work out your “Big 5” projects that you can champion or get involved in. These projects should have as wide a company impact as possible, but also some relevance to your day job so you can get buy-in from the bosses above you. Some of the best areas to be involved in are likely to be :

Important areas that could improve the core business, such as IT
Innovation and new customer breakthrough projects
Company sustainability initiatives
Corporate transactions such as mergers or partnerships
CEO-led organizational change projects
Talent and leadership projects – these allow you really to shape the culture and build your own supportive movement of talent to work with you
Then focus on working with your peers in partnership. You help them to deliver their projects and they help you. You both commit to go out of your way to support and advise each other and navigate the corporate system way. Ideally you create a tribe of peers and become a collective positive force.

The Third 30: Act like a CEO & Become His Or Her Confidant

Critically, you can now spend 30% of your time with the CEO’s hat on. You’ll need to think about how you can take the company to the next level, and work out how best to support your CEO to fly. The majority of CEOs struggle with the job, so in most companies there will be many areas where they are looking to improve the business or add value with a new idea.

Think as if you’re the CEO acting in the best interests of the company – what will your agenda be? It might help you to focus on these three specific areas:

(a) Business Performance Today

Which are the areas of the company that are not performing or pose a risk to next set of financial results?
Which people above you are not performing or are creating a blockage?
What are most important company changes that must be made?
(b) Future Business Leadership

Are people passionate and excited about the company’s vision and mission? Is there a bigger ambition and cause that they could rally around?
Is the management team focused enough on building the business for the future?
Are there three “Apple-like” breakthroughs that could take the company to a new level?
(c) Personal Leadership

Do leaders work more for themselves or for the company?
Is there a high enough trust and belief in the key relationships?
Does the company recruit the right talent with the right values?
Is there a unified way of how the company does business?
These are the typical problem areas that most CEOs grapple with, so your CEO is likely to need these answers too. So work out your solutions to these problems and the smart way to move them forward.

The key step now is to become the CEO’s confidant:

Remember that the CEO job is lonely and there are not many people whom a CEO can trust. Be fearless: it is actually easier for the CEO if you are a few rungs down the organization, as you’ll be perceived as less of a threat. The trick here is to find a way legitimately to connect with and get quality time with them, without being seen as pushy or upsetting your boss.”

If your CEO is just not accessible, then aim to do the above with the most senior person in the business you can.

Leading the organizational projects in the second 30% should have given you opportunities. Capitalize on them in the third 30% by planting seeds – whenever you get a window of the CEO’s time, ask the high-quality difficult questions to your CEO in a constructive manner, and have your own point of view ready for when the CEO asks for it.

If you are good, then you will be drawn in to give more points of view, then told to speak to others with the CEO’s blessing. It gives you the opportunity to use the pull from above to get involved in CEO priority projects. Contribute well and you earn “CEO credits”. You will progressively get called in on more “special projects” which report directly to the CEO. These big initiatives typically have external impact, allowing you to build your personal brand and networks, while gaining exposure to more stakeholders. Your star will rise from there.

Survival tip: remember to work the systems to ensure that your line manager and their bosses get lots of credit from you too. In any office politics, you will need their support. You’re also creating an opportunity for them to be seen as the great boss who’s grooming you for success.

The Last 10: Have Fun

Assuming the unofficial CEO role from within can be massively challenging, as there is always more to be done in a company. When you lead in the 30:30:30:10 way you can naturally end up taking responsibility for the company, initially without the rewards or the true recognition for the value you create. Applying the rule can also take you beyond your allotted working hours. So it’s important not to let this leader’s quest subsume you – make sure you make time to have a life and to have some fun.

The happiest CEOs I’ve met are those who have managed either to build strong boundaries between their work and home lives, so that home refreshes them for work and work does not impinge on home. Set the right foundations in your early years: go out with your family, friends and enjoy life. If you can’t manage your work-life balance in your 20s, you won’t stand a chance later in life as personal and professional obligations get bigger.

So, are you ready to go the extra mile? Sometimes it may seem like one step forward and two steps back. Don’t expect everybody to be as chuffed as your peer partnership group with your meteoric rise to the top. Many corporations – and particularly those which involve traditional power structures – are filled with a blend of time-serving survivors and self-serving ambitious people, as well as the good people who are just looking for quality leadership. A thick rhino-type skin will be required at times so not to be affected personally when people inevitably throw rocks at your projects, question your motives, and try and position you as a self-serving rebel with the CEO.

Learn to pick your battles but win the war. If getting results from 30:30:30:10 becomes too hard or starts to involve too much aggravation, then that’s usually the signal that it’s time to leave. And yes, you may even get fired, but if so you leave with your head help high, as you tried to do the right thing and gave your best. You also leave with amazing accelerated leadership experiences for your next role, a power network, personal brand and ideally a CEO sponsor, as well as CEO experience (albeit without the title)!

In my experience of applying 30:30:30:10, I flew to the top twice and got fired once. I have no regrets, and actually learned more when I failed. The experience helped me to work out how I would tailor the rule with greater success as I joined my next company. 30:30:30:10 also gives you a fantastic CEO grounding to set up your own company, which is what I then went on to do next.

So, trapped right now or not valued by your company? Go for it. Your exact percentages may vary in the day-to-day, but the point is that once you assume the 30:30:30:10 mindset, you will have less of a fixed job and instead one that is always changing and evolving. 30:30:30:10 can be your escape route out from under the thumb of a demeaning boss. Or the wake-up call that you need to leave the company entirely and start afresh.

Over To You

I would love to create a movement of fellow corporate rebel leaders who are brave enough to apply the 30:30:30:10 rule in their companies and bring it to life. I’m really keen to hear about your 30:30:30:10 experiences and ideas in the comments section below, and would be happy to consider featuring the most interesting ones in a future article.

Also do follow me here on LinkedIn to get weekly updates on how to become a better leader. Good luck!

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By Steve Tappin

Chief Executive, Xinfu, Host BBC CEO Guru & Founder, World Of CEOs

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Steve is a personal confidant to many of the world’s top CEOs. He is the host of BBC ‘CEO Guru’, which features in-depth, on-the-record interviews with the CEOs of General Electric, Lenovo, WPP, China Vanke, Wholefoods and Unilever.

Founder Of WorldOfCEOs.com, Steve is the author of ‘The Secrets Of CEOs’, which interviews 200 CEOs on business life and leadership. His latest book, ‘Dream to Last’, was published in Mandarin in December 2012, by Beijing University Press, and will be released in English later this year.

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