A different way to think about CEO leverage

In most companies, the calendar has a tendency to just “happen” to their CEO.

Requests pile in and the most recent gets the slot. Harvard Business School tracked 27 executives and found the average chief executive already works about 62.5 hours a week and still, most leadership teams have no real answer to the question of: Is this the right use of the CEO’s time?

I recently sat down with Stefanie Jay, Goldman Sachs veteran, GM and architect of Walmart's retail media business, and former Chief Business Officer at eBay. Our conversation completely reframed how I think about executive leverage.

Her path started at ZEFER, where she joined as employee #5. When the company prepared to go public, she got a front-row seat to the capital markets. And soon after, Goldman Sachs called. She then spent the next 7-8 years as an M&A banker covering Consumer & Retail, and eventually made a pivot from client work into the executive office.

And that shift put her inside one of the most under-examined questions in leadership…

What makes a CEO as effective and efficient as possible?

Working that close to the CEO role (seeing how decisions get made, where time actually goes, what separates high-leverage work from noise) became the real training ground and offered her a window into the most critical role of an organization.

What she assembled is a way of thinking that makes sitting CEOs sharper and gives the leaders around them a blueprint for what it really takes to be ready for the top job. Her experience has both shaped how she thinks about leadership and is what makes her ready to run something of her own.

Here’s a look at how it works.

Framework 1: The capacity plan

Start here and get brutally honest about a CEO’s capacity.

Even at full pace, there are only so many high-quality hours available. At a practical level, that translates to roughly 300–400 external, client-facing meetings per year.

Every one of those slots is a strategic decision.

Stef's approach:

• Start with the full picture. From 100% of a CEO’s time, roughly half is already committed to core responsibilities (board work, earnings/investor engagement, strategy, leadership/talent). This is the operating backbone. Don’t fight it.
• Break down the remaining 50% of external engagement. This is where external meetings lives but it’s not all flexible. About 25–30% of that time is typically absorbed by standing commitments like major conferences, forums, and industry events.
• Optimize what’s left. Within that remaining external time, that leaves roughly ~70–75% (or approx. 200-300 meetings) where the CEO has real discretion. Instead of treating every meeting equally, map that time across strategic priorities (e.g. geography, industry, key relationships, emerging bets). Think of it as portfolio management for attention.
• Design for cadence, not just coverage. Seeing a priority stakeholder even twice a year instead of just once can materially deepen the relationship. Frequency builds familiarity, signals priority, and compounds trust over time.
• Protect from entropy. Without structure, the CEO’s calendar becomes a constant juggling act reacting to the loudest request or most urgent need. The result is a calendar that’s full, but not very intentional.
  
  

Framework 2: Quality over quantity - a strategic but agile approach to filling the calendar

You’ve got a better picture of capacity. Now, who should access it?

That’s where strategy, and a little bit of human chemistry, are going to come into the picture.

Stef assessed a few critical questions in key areas to strategize:

• Business priority - What are the firm’s top priorities this year? And which relationships directly influence/accelerate these?

• Key industries - What’s happening in key industries and what are the sectors that are critical to stay in front of?

• Conferences/natural touchpoints - What are the highest impact CEO conferences and public events? Here, Stef emphasized how to stack and sequence these interactions with intention. For example, if a relationship is being actively cultivated, 3-4 meaningful interactions at different conferences might be possible without having to add a standalone meeting.

• Implications - Who are the true influencers driving policy? When significant dynamics are shifting (regulatory pressure, geopolitical development with real business implications), the CEO’s calendar should reflect that.

Framework 2b: Relationship scoring system

Once this foundational strategic layer is in place, Stef and her team, in close collaboration with client teams and lead relationship bankers, used a five-point client ranking system to further plan:

Most companies don't know where their most important relationships actually sit on this scale. They operate on gut instinct and maybe even a little bit of news cycles. The relationship that was in the headlines last week with recent funding gets the meeting, while a tier-5 stakeholder goes dark for a quarter.

So the discipline here is simple.

Build and rank the list. Then, review it as often as possible. That alone is gonna put you ahead of most.

Framework 2c: The “hidden” strategic layer on chemistry

An equally strategic layer is trying to identify and plan according to chemistry.

Relationships are first and foremost established on human connection.

Not every high-priority stakeholder is a natural fit for every executive and pretending otherwise can actually be one of the most common and costly mistakes in executive relationship management.

Part of this strategic layer is being honest about where the CEO's deep areas of expertise, communication style, and personality create the conditions for a real relationship to form.

This takes real human judgment.

It’s also notably the part of the system that no amount of automation can ever fully replace. You can score a relationship and map conferences all day but understanding and planning according to chemistry can’t be manufactured. (But more on this below)

Where AI fits into CEO leverage

In most high-growth companies, Stef and I talked about how the founder or CEO is the original “rainmaker”. They shape the narrative and build/maintain those first critical waves of demand.

What’s changed now is that AI can dramatically multiply that influence at a scale we’ve truly never seen before.

A CEO’s voice, instincts, and network can be amplified across the entire GTM and org at large in ways that simply weren’t possible beforehand. And tasks that once required an entire team (such as research, messaging, outreach, etc.) can now be scaled through a much smaller team and the help of AI.

It also brings a level of consistency that’s hard to maintain manually. It can capture insights from convos, track relationships over time, and turn that signal into better meetings, follow-ups, and ultimately stronger commercial outcomes. For example, teams (and investors) now drop earnings transcripts into AI and instantly pull out patterns or competitive signals… this is analysis that used to take hours but is now taking minutes.

That kind of capability changes how a CEO can show up.

Why this matters for modern startups and early stage companies

As startups get leaner and more capital efficient, this becomes one of the most game changing advantages and levers available to any early-stage team. A strong CEO foundation combined with AI-driven scaling creates a growth engine that previous generations just never had the access to (and at a fraction of the time/cost).

So now…

• The CEO can stay the primary market voice and the heart of the GTM engine longer and in more impactful ways
• Smaller teams can generate outsized demand and output
• Companies can reach meaningful traction before investing in heavy GTM headcount

But there is still a tipping point.

There’s no denying that CEO-driven growth is very powerful in the early and mid stages but eventually, every company hits a tipping point. When does the CEO closing every deal go from competitive advantage to an inefficient use of the most expensive person in the building’s time?

Watch for some of these common signals:

• Pipeline is bigger than the person
• The message sounds different depending on who's saying it
• Deals are closing without the CEO (OR not closing because of them)
• The best people on your team are waiting for direction instead of creating it on their own

If the CEO remains the primary rainmaker indefinitely, a growing company’s bound to run into a bandwidth ceiling. And when you reach this, success is gonna depend on something different…

Systems.

The leverage layer

The goal’s now to build infrastructure around the CEO’s influence so the company can scale beyond it. That means building systems that turn CEO momentum into something systematic:

• GTM infrastructure and repeatable sales processes
• Distribution channels beyond the just the CEO’s network
• Systems that convert CEO demand into scalable pipeline
• Leaders who operationalize what the CEO creates

Done right, the CEO shifts from being the prerequisite for growth to the amplifier of it.

The real opportunity

Suddenly, the CEO’s impact can ripple across the entire org in a way that’s efficient and makes sense and maybe even under a 62.5-hour week. AI is dramatically expanding the surface area of the CEO’s influence and letting companies reach meaningful scale before they need these massive GTM teams.

And that’s really where the opportunity and unlock is…
It’s extracting the highest-value elements of how the CEO operates and building systems that let everyone else execute at that level, and vice versa.

As Stef put it: “That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about scale, isn’t it?”

What AI doesn’t change

When I asked Stef how she'd do it differently today, her answer was immediate. AI would change almost everything…

• Briefing research - company context, news, and relationship history surfaced in minutes
• Meeting prioritization - relationships scored by opportunity and strategic fit
• Connection mapping and transparency - shared networks, boards, or conference overlap identified instantly
• Follow-through tracking - commitments logged and reminders triggered automatically

But two things stay human, always:

• Anything that builds real chemistry - relationships form in unscripted moments… e.g. the aside after the meeting and the shared reaction to something unexpected.
• Anything where trust is on the line - this is the ask and all the moments where someone decides whether to work with you. That has and always will require a person.

How the minutes turn into meaning

After talking with Stef, I realized that it’s maybe not just about simply doing more (although, there’s always more to be done). Really, you have to do differently.

Every single hour and each convo we have, we have to think about which meetings actually move the needle. Where can we inject insight instead of just presence? What can we automate or delegate to free up time for the moments that matter?

Time is the only finite resource we all share.

In between the 400 meetings, we have families, personal commitments, hobbies, kids’ soccer games, and a million other moments that matter. How we show up in those hours, at work and in life, defines the outcomes we achieve and the trust we build. Applying this approach to our non-work lives too helps us make sure we are doing what matters most to us.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but how we manage them writes our story.