Focus and Execution
I've been thinking a lot about these two success factors lately, and frankly I can't think of any that top them.
Way too many years ago I had a job fixing cars and Bob—a guy I worked with—used to say, “A bad idea that works is better than a good idea that doesn't.”
Bob dropped out of school when he was 14 to work on a farm. Years later I sat in conference rooms surrounded by guys with MBA's from Harvard and Stanford and I realized some of them didn't get what Bob knew instinctively: strategy without execution loses every time.
Don't get me wrong: I'm a strategy kind of guy. As a company, the first thing we do with clients is help them set a strategy. What's different is that by the time many people come to us, they've tried several strategies that didn't work. So we help them create a strategy that will.
But then they've got to execute. And execution takes focus.
Focus isn't about what you do: it's about what you don't do. Because there are an unlimited number of opportunities, projects, ideas, features, all of which can suck you away from what's most important. So staying focused is a lot about saying “No.”
It's not that the ideas aren't good, or the features wouldn't add value to your product. That new, proposed strategic alliance? Fantastic idea, but “no.”
Just say NO.
Say NO to all the great new ideas that spring up every day. Say NO to sales meetings with companies not in your target market. Say no to partnering with anyone who can't take you right to the current goal. Say NO to everything that takes you away from your core mission and plan.
It's hard—I know it's hard. But saying NO is really a way of saying yes: yes to your current strategy and plans, yes to the idea that you've actually identified the right thing to do first, yes to staying the course.
Repeat after me: Until we have a new strategy, this is what we're going to do. And nothing else.
I bet more companies fail by lack of focus than by anything else. And I can't think of a single company that failed because of too much focus.
Just make sure you're focused on the right thing. Focusing exclusively on a terrible plan isn't going to get you where you want to go. So you need feedback to check the rightness of your plan. If the plan doesn't work, change it. And then focus on the new plan.
