One of the most contentious words in collective human endeavour is focus. It's elusive. It's used as a stick by the self-righteous to beat those they call 'undisciplined'. What one person describes as 'focus' another deems as 'unhealthy obsession'!
The focus on focus often reminds me of Peter Drucker's inspired comment about efficiency (substitute the word 'focus' for 'efficiency'): "There's nothing quite as pointless and soul-destroying as doing with great efficiency that which one should not be doing in the first place!"
Focus is not a word, or a single concept. It's an entire language and an art form. It's subtle and nuanced, not the blunt instrument so often employed by too many, especially in business. The unthinking application of the concept of focus is at the root of far too much mediocrity.
Here are some thoughts on why, how to guard against it and thus improve your game dramatically.
_________________________________________________________________________________Years ago a close friend of mine had an article published in a national newspaper about a spoof scientific concept he'd invented called 'Jardin's Principle'. In essence it was a 3-stage model for ideas and principles, pitched as follows:
- The vast majority of ideas are simplistic, even childish, to start with and many stay that way. Over time they become diluted through incorrect or over-usage since they are used as throwaway shorthand, substituted in place of the need to think. 'Focus' is a good example - too often it is bandied around like a facile religious mantra, as if its mere mention will somehow confers special powers on a situation and solve all the problems that those to whom it is said have supposedly failed to address already.
- Many ideas then go through a second stage where they become highly complex. They are applied rigidly and bureaucratically, diminishing their power. 'Focus' is a good example here too. Organisations impose systems and procedures to 'maintain focus' and 'improve decision-making', but the criteria for doing so are too often inappropriate, ill-conceived and stifle innovation.
- Very few ideas ultimately make it into the sunlit uplands of profound simplicity, where they usually have great power and fuel exceptional performance. This generally only happens when people step back, think intelligently about what they really want, and start designing their activities from sound first principles.
Here are some topical examples hopefully illustrating the pitfalls of Stage 1 and Stage 2 and the huge upside that Stage 3 confers on exceptional performers who get it:
- This week the entire 7 member cabinet of Rotherham Council resigned following a devastating report, which they themselves had commissioned, into their failure to admit and address the serious child sex abuse scandal which has made the South Yorkshire town notorious. Persistent, detailed investigative journalism by a respected national newspaper uncovered an appalling legacy. For many years a large group of Pakistani men in the town sexually abused an estimated 1,400 white teenage girls, a truly staggering number, most of whom were damaged and vulnerable, many of them in the so-called 'care' system (a contradiction in terms, it seems). The men responsible were mainly connected with local taxi firms, predominantly run by Pakistanis, and it is alleged that they were protected by two powerful Pakistani councillors who themselves instilled fear in council officials, particularly in the unfit-for-purpose Children's Services Department. Deluded by the naive, self-defeating culture of political correctness so pervasive under Tony Blair's New Labour and Gordon Brown's UK governments (1997-2010) council managers and employees substituted the wrong focus for the right one and lost the plot completely. They knew of, or strongly suspected, the alleged child abuse but were far more worried about being accused of racism so they failed to act against it. Until recently, in response to the unfolding crisis, senior managers at Rotherham Council buried their heads in the sand, adopted a defensive, bunker mentality and lied about what they knew. In this textbook example of the perils of groupthink (see my blog Human weakness - a competitive advantage?) they convinced themselves it was an unfair, politically motivated witchhunt against them and steadfastly refused to accept the mounting evidence of how severe the problem had been and how dire were its consequences. Instead of facing upto the brutal realities (see last week's blog, The truth may hurt, but seeking it sets you free) they pretended there was no problem.
- During the weekly Skype call on Friday morning with my business partners to review the startup of Resolve Gets Results LLP we examined a set of 'traffic light' templates that two of the partners had prepared for the purpose of selecting, discarding or deferring, then monitoring and managing individual start-up/business development projects. One of the criteria they'd chosen as a key variable was the amount of time required on each project in the current Quarter. When I replied that this was an impossible question to answer I was met with the kind of well-intentioned, tut-tutting disapproval no doubt administered to mavericks like me daily in companies the world over!! I can hear the offstage discussion in my imagination - "Mark really does need to be managed - he lacks discipline!" My response was unduly impatient and tetchy - sorry guys! But it got me thinking, and I realised that Jardin's Principle explained my unhappiness. So here's a more measured response. I was being presented (mostly implicitly) with a Jardin's Stage 1 and Stage 2 argument about focus. What was needed however was Stage 3 thinking which goes something like this. There are four questions to ask about each project under consideration - 1) Will it generate income in the next 3-6 months sufficient to justify (in the round - we can't predict it accurately) the time, effort and cost we'll need to put into it? 2) How important is it to us strategically? 3) What assumptions are we making, explictly or implicitly (there are always far more of the latter and they are the kickers) that we need to test carefully? and 4) What risks do we need to identify and manage? If the answer to Q1 and Q2 (following debate) is 'Yes' then we find a way to do it and we look closely at Qs 3 and 4. If we end up with more projects that tick boxes than we can deal with then we either bring in additional resource, we defer some of the work to the next Quarter or we unleash our creativity to solve the problem, which is highly motivating. Attaching numbers picked largely out of thin air to create a pseudo-objective decision-making process wastes time and energy, is self-delusional, demotivating and is likely to provoke unnecessary disagreement.
- Google are exceptionally good at this and have a keen understanding of the parameters for good decision-making and focus. Listening yesterday to CD7 of 'How Google Works' (Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, 2014) I came across yet another great example. Google's focus is always on the end-user of their products - what does he or she need? How can we innovate to create new value for them? Google's approach, like Apple's, contrasts sharply with the approach of most companies. Schmidt and Rosenberg describe for example the culture they came across in Motorola, which Google acquired in 2012. Motorola was full of product teams working on separate projects for different market segments and customers - to Motorola a 'customer' was one of its corporate partners, not the end-user of their mobile phones. The result was a complex, labyrinthine organisational structure more reminiscent of a military hiearchy than a well-adapted, nimble, 21st Century high technology corporation. This inefficient, cumbersome, slow-moving and unimaginative structure, replicated in thousands of companies round the world, was a direct result of Motorola's choice of focus. In effect Motorola was mass-producing inefficiency (back to Peter Drucker again)!
In the chaotic, dynamic 21st Century fluid. adaptive leadership and organisational models are essential for survival, let alone prosperity. There are two over-riding principles which I believe govern wise decisions about where to put focus and resources, and how much.
One is the research finding, borne out again and again, that nearly all highly successful organisations deliberately foster a culture in which motivated people exercise great self-discipline without needing to be managed to do so. They decide for themselves that they need to, because their organisation acts like a mature, supportive and encouraging parent, not a pedantic, bullying schoolmaster, and because it encourages a fiercely entrepreneurial mindset focused on adding value for the end-user, like Google and Apple do. (In most other ways Google and Apple are as alike as chalk and cheese.) In this culture alot of management problems simply melt away and everyone gets far better at a) getting the job done and b) adding more value.
The second principle is Lean Startup, about which software entrepreneur Eric Rees wrote an excellent book (2011). The term Lean Startup is somewhat confusing, but it means an adaptive approach to doing projects, any projects, which require rapid learning and testing of assumptions in order to move fast and avoid Drucker's trap of being efficient at working on entirely the wrong stuff. Ries has spawned a worldwide movement of people focused on slick project execution by using this method. It really works and there are many case studies, including Ries's own, that prove it. The core principle of Lean Startup is to figure out your assumptions and then construct experiments, or test relatively crude prototype products as fast as possible with end-users. They will tell you what you're doing or thinking wrong and then you can fix it quickly, easily and at much less cost than if it went undetected till later.
So don't get mired down in Jardin's Stage 1 or Stage 2 thinking about focus. Work out what results you need from your work, focus on those, set milestones, learn, iterate the process, and review constantly. Like Google make sure your objectives are firmly focused on end-users' needs, not your organisation's or your business partners'. Drive your business this way and seek a constant stream of feedback from your end-users. Do NOT try to manage using 20th Century methods - resource inputs, budgets and 'internal' requirements. Stage 3 thinking says ultimately the only thing that matters, and will allow you to survive and prosper, is adding increasing value for your end-users.
All else pales in comparison!
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