Focusing on what matters

Objective

I once had the unbelievable experience, when managing a large multi-million pound project, of being challenged (by a corporate services division) about roaming charges for one Blackberry user in my staff. The hapless support executive who received my none-too-pleased response was doubtless only doing his job. He had been charged with reducing telephony costs, international Blackberry users seemed fair game, and the stated savings of £2 per 10 minutes’ calling-time was apparently worth his while. On the other hand, I was confronting project delays and cost overruns that, compared with roaming charges, were both material and relevant.

It is a now-established management mantra that success depends on doing the ‘right things’ rather than doing ‘things right’, and this remains a crucial part of a leader’s armoury. It matters because what you do as a leader ultimately influences what your staff do, albeit sometimes imperceptibly. The organisations that are most successful are those most focused on the task at hand:

• having a clear segmentation of customers;
• understanding and delivering their needs;
• providing acceptable shareholder or stakeholder returns.

The risk that you face is that as your team or organisation grows and matures, it loses sight of these tasks, and acquires systems and processes that become an end in themselves.

Your goal as a successful leader is unremitting focus.

Context

Things that ‘don’t matter’ can be said to fall into two categories.

• Things which never matter – areas of activity that are purposeless in almost any organisation, and whose existence reveals deeper-seated organisational behaviour issues. Take, for example, the organisation that requires a written justification, signed by the divisional managing director, for a Blackberry to be issued to one of its directors. Sure there is need for a paper trail for both approval and asset management purposes – but a written justification? If any organisation trusts its managers so little in deciding whether to issue Blackberries or not, then it has the wrong managers. It should focus first on firing the managers rather than rationing the Blackberries!
• Things which leaders choose don’t matter – the issues you decide do not matter. What is on this list will vary from time to time. How do you decide what is on the list? It depends above all else on your single-minded determination to focus all aspects of the business on explicit goals, and to refuse to be diverted to non-core activities. Take, for example, the organisation that has defined its key international markets to be the USA and Europe, but becomes aware of a substantial opportunity in Japan. The focused leader declines the unexpected opportunity and retains focus, rather than allowing the new opportunity to be pursued at the expense of the core goals, in a way which might suggest they were wrongly selected.

All leaders of all teams will always be presented with possible tasks, activities or opportunities that are peripheral to agreed strategic goals. They may indeed be tempting or interesting, but they must be rejected. Maintaining focus requires as much ruthlessness as risk-taking requires bravery.

Challenge

The business world we live in is one of rapid and extreme change – never more so than during the impacts of the 2008–9 ‘credit crunch’ – and success requires a responsiveness, adaptability and decisiveness which may seem at odds with a constant and unrelenting focus. But this is to misunderstand the nature of focus.

Being focused is not about sticking to what you said to your team you were going to do simply because you said so – that is sheer stubbornness. A key element of focus, for example, may be sensitivity to customer requirements or achieving certain financial goals. When a customer demands change, or when financial targets come under threat, effective focus means taking actions that respond to changed circumstances.

If business environment circumstances change substantially, you should have enough focus on the implications for performance to be prepared to call for a strategic review of your team’s direction, rather than perpetuate a set of strategic goals that are becoming increasingly out of date.

Success

Maintaining clear focus depends on:

• strategy – a clear strategic intent and vision;
• goals – fixed and published goals;
• structure – an aligned organisational structure;
• value – insight into where the leader adds value;
• advocacy – constant repetition of strategy and goals.

With this in place you can not only articulate what matters, but be credible in doing so. It provides a framework for all future discussions on a wide range of topics, and sets a clear example to your colleagues of the way in which you expect success to be achieved. This will be helped by you being clear about what areas of activity you intend to leave to your team. Not only does this further emphasise your own focus, but through such delegation you empower your team in their own focus.

You can set for yourself a checklist of questions which you might usefully ask throughout your tenure to ensure you are on track.

• Am I clear about the organisation’s vision?
• Am I clear about the team’s goals?
• Am I clear about my personal goals?
• How much time am I giving to issues not related to goals?
• Am I allowing my team to do their jobs?

A very effective supplement is for you to periodically list and review all your current outstanding actions (however important, however minor), mapping them against your checklist. This will give a clear ongoing indication about how far focus is being achieved or lost.

Pitfalls

It is all too easy to get drawn into what doesn’t matter and you must be on constant guard against this risk. This is extremely likely if your team or organisation does not have clearly focused strategic goals, since all else follows from this framework. If you allow yourself to become unfocused, you will soon discover that:

• your organisation becomes overloaded with non-critical tasks;
• individuals in your team cannot describe their common purpose easily;
• key financial and performance indicators will turn negative.

An unfocused organisation is commonly one that has the hallmarks of being extremely busy – the level of activity itself is a sign of inattention to a core purpose.

Leaders’ checklist

• Understand that no strategy is worth anything without a matching capability to implement it – and that a key part of implementation is focus.
• Be prepared to focus on focus – talk and act focus, remind colleagues of focus and emphasise its importance.
• Have the courage to pass opportunities by – however intrinsically attractive – when they risk defocusing the organisation.
• Be humble enough to recognise that focus applies to you as well as everyone else and use the checklist and review process to ensure you remain focused.
• Remember that your effectiveness as a leader is measured by outputs not inputs, and that you should not allow guilt feelings about focus to drive you to undertake additional tasks for their own sake.