You Don’t Need More Time. You Need More Clarity.

If you’re still wrestling with whether you’re working on the business or in the business, you’re asking the wrong question.

This debate only shows up when clarity is missing. It’s not a time management problem. It’s not a delegation problem. It’s a focus problem. And it starts at the top.

Here’s what clarity actually looks like, and why getting it right solves the “on vs. in” tension once and for all.

1. Clarity of Destination: You can’t prioritize, nor make difficult decisions if you don’t know where you’re going.

Most growth stalls because the team doesn’t know what the win actually looks like.

Vague goals like “grow revenue” or “increase pipeline” don’t create focus. They create noise.

A clear destination sounds more like:

“We want to increase net new revenue by $4M over the next 12 months, by improving conversion in our core segment from 12% to 20%.”

It’s measurable. It’s directional. And more importantly, it creates a filter. If something doesn’t move the team toward that outcome, it’s not a priority, no matter how urgent it feels.

Without this level of clarity, leaders default to reactive mode.

That’s when you start hearing phrases like, “I just need more time to work on the business.”

2. Clarity of Path: More activity is not more progress.

When direction is unclear, the default move is to do more. More campaigns. More reps. More tools. But that “more” often just spreads your team thinner and dilutes your impact.

The better move is subtraction. Start with this question:

“If we had to grow without adding a single person, what would we have to do to create more flow now? What is the problem would we fix first to increase flow?”

That question forces clarity. It shifts you from a volume mindset to a leverage mindset.

In every go-to-market motion, there is always one key friction point. A broken handoff. A confused buyer. A misunderstood problem. Fix that, and the rest starts to flow.

3. Clarity of Friction: You can’t fix what you won’t name.

You can’t delegate your way out of fuzzy thinking. Even great teams will stall if they’re not aligned on what’s broken and what to fix first.

Too often, leaders assume the team knows where the friction is. Or worse, they’ve grown used to working around it.

Real clarity means putting the bottleneck in the middle of the table and asking:

“What’s slowing us down right now, and why hasn’t it been fixed?”

Sometimes it’s misaligned messaging. Sometimes it’s lack of belief in the solution. Sometimes it’s just bad math on deal velocity.

Whatever it is, you have to name it. What stays vague stays stuck.

The Bottom Line

The “on vs. in the business” debate disappears when you have clarity. The problems above are both on and in. The debate over this is great for consultants, it’s catchy, and it makes the consultants sound smart and you buy in because it impossible to argue with … or so they think. A cliche that is commonly accepted.

Clarity gives you direction. It filters your decisions. It focuses your team. When you know where you’re going, what’s in the way, and how to fix it, you don’t need more time.

You will already be moving.