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Focus! But on what?

November 21, 2013 by Dale Furtwengler — President, Furtwengler & Associates, P.C.

Many of the most successful people I know attribute a great deal of their success to their ability to focus their time, effort and energy. The question is, how do they decide where to place that focus? We’ll be answering that question today.

The question brings to mind an old, made-for-TV serial, Noble House, in which Pierce Brosnan takes control of a family empire on the verge of collapse. Fast forward to a scene at a horse race where Brosnan is enjoying the day’s activities. One of Brosnan’s guests is amazed at his ability to enjoy the races given all the challenges he’s facing. When asked how he managed that seemingly impossible feat, Brosnan replied:

Every problem has a compartment. I pull it out when I’m ready to work on it.  

What a simple, yet incredibly profound, way to deal with the array of challenges we inevitably face. While wonderfully insightful Brosnan’s response doesn’t answer the question of how to choose which problem to address or what amount of time and energy to devote to it.

Problem

The reality is that, as business owners, on any given day you’re facing challenges on a variety of fronts:

• Enhancing existing customer relationships
• Attracting new customers
• Anticipating customers’ changing needs
• Evaluating competitors’ product launches/price changes
• Identifying new markets
• Improving productivity
• Improving employee morale
• Attracting/retaining talent
• Regulatory issues

The list goes on and on. Obviously you can’t focus on all of these fronts at once, so how do we choose?

Urgency

Unfortunately many of us choose on the basis of urgency. Urgency being defined as the greatest perceived threat at this point in time. Are we losing top talent? Are sales languishing? Has our primary market become a commodity market? Are we losing our most profitable customers?

The problem with this approach is that we’re always reacting to situations; we’re scrambling to maintain the status quo while our competitors are gaining a competitive advantage. Not a great long-term strategy.

Enjoyable

Absent any emergency, we’re likely to choose to work on the things that interest us the most. As business owners we should have the privilege of doing the work we enjoy while delegating less pleasant tasks to others. That privilege, however, does not exempt us from monitoring the work being delegated or applying strategic thinking in those realms.

Rotating 

The thing that’s worked best for me is carving out time on my calendar each week to focus my attention on each of the various aspects of my business. I’ll devote some time each week to:

Evaluate my existing client base asking- Are there clients I haven’t contacted recently? Have there been any problems that surfaced that I can trace to an oversight on my part in crafting a solution to their problem? Are clients struggling with implementation? If so, how can I make the process easier for them? Have they indicated an interest in or requested help with new issues? Is that a potential market for me? 

Identifying new markets - Did I receive requests for new services or suggestions on markets I should be addressing? Are these opportunities worth considering? What progress have I made in approaching markets I’ve identified, but not yet penetrated? How effective has my approach been so far?

Improving productivity - How can I streamline the processes involved in marketing, selling, producing and delivering my service? Am I continuing to monitor my performance (e.g. time to complete the task)? The more quickly I deliver a solution to my clients, the more quickly they enjoy results and get a return on their investment with me.

Employee morale/productivity - I don’t have employees, but if I did I’d be monitoring their productivity as an early indicator of morale issues. I’d be asking them, on a rotating basis, for their ideas on how we could do things better, faster and increase customer satisfaction in the process.

You get the idea. While I put these items on my calendar each week, I’m not so rigid in my scheduling that I don’t allow for movement within the week. I won’t allow one of these sessions to slide into the next week. Doing so readily translates into a habit of deferring work I don’t enjoy.

Flexibility

I allow for flexibility during the week for a variety of reasons. My energy level may be low that day and my ability to focus diminished. If so I’ll opt for some mindless tasks that need to be completed and postpone the truly important work for the following day. When I do that I make sure I hit the sack early that evening so I have the energy to tackle those tasks the next day.

Another reason for flexibility in the schedule is that my mind isn’t always ready to deal with the issue I’ve scheduled. There are days when I’ve scheduled writing time and stare at the screen for five fruitless minutes. Often it’s because my mind is drifting to other questions. Things like a question posed by a client that may open the door to a new opportunity or an observation made by someone I just met that causes me to look at my offerings in a new light. Whatever the reason for my inability to write at that moment, it makes sense to shift my focus to the issue my mind wants to address. In other words, I don’t fight nature. I’ve found fighting nature to be one of the most futile and frustrating exercises in which I’ve engaged.  

Interestingly, when I allow my mind to work on what it wants to address, I not only complete that task more quickly I find it much easier to focus on the scheduled item when I return to it.

This simple approach will not only help you make sure that you’re touching all the bases in your business each week, you’ll find that you’re preempting many of the issues those employing the ‘urgency’ strategy face. Now FOCUS!

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