The first Block and Limitation to Business Genius is fruitless focus.
Scattergun focus, for example, is often fruitless because there’s no clear target.
(That’s why Andrew Carnegie – the famous steel billionaire – once said ‘a man should never scatter his shot’.)
Split focus, is often fruitless, too, because there are too many targets.
(That’s why Tony Schwartz – the Harvard academic – highlights ‘the magic of doing one thing at a time’ and also having a ‘not-to-do list’.)
Septic focus, however, is, perhaps, the most fruitless of all because it means we hit the target, but end up missing the point!
(That’s why Sir Ken Robinson – the well-known creativity expert – stresses the importance of not viewing a situation ‘in isolation of its context’.)
Take Kodak, for example. Why did it come close to collapse in 2012? Well, largely because of septic focus: it focused too much on the glories of its past (i.e. its 90 per cent market share in the 1970s) and not enough on the possibilities of the future (i.e. the rise of the digital camera).
Similarly, why was the telecoms industry simply out-smarted by the ‘disruptive innovation’ of Skype? Well, largely because telecoms firms focused too much on the established competition, and not enough on the emerging competition. As a result – according to business model authors Osterwalder and Pigneur – the ‘free international calls’ provider nobody took remotely seriously a few years back currently has over ‘400 million users, and generates in excess of $550 million revenue a year!’
So, please remember it’s not usually focus itself that matters in business (because we’re always focusing on something); it’s fruitful focus that matters: focus that moves us closer towards our desired outcome (not further away from it).
And, talking about ‘fruit’, here’s a thought …
Back in the early 1800s the savvy Scotsman James Keiller didn’t just concentrate on making quality ‘orange spread’. Nope. There wouldn’t have been much Business Genius in that.
By contrast, according to author Allan Burnett, he set his sights on a much juicier goal: ‘Marketing Keiller’s marmalade as a breakfast spread, rather than as a dessert, which was how marmalade had traditionally been consumed.’
As a result, Keiller’s ‘Marmalade for breakfast’ focus helped turn him into a multi-millionaire.
Genius!
UP! YOUR FOCUS
NUGGET
Love him or loathe him, it’s hard to deny that Simon Cowell (The X Factor impresario) has surgical-strike focus when it comes to business.
Let’s face it, how else would the former EMI post boy – who spent 18 months ‘pushing the trolley for £25 a week’ – evolve into one of the world’s highest-paid and most uber-influential media moguls?
Cowell’s focus was amazingly simple from the start: he wanted to work in the music industry, and he wanted to reach the top! However, according to his biographer Tom Bower, when his request for a promotion at EMI was rejected (because he ‘lacked any knowledge about music’ at the time), he realised that his approach wasn’t working. So what did he do? He changed tack, and promised himself – there and then – ‘I’ll work my way up.’ And he achieved this by channelling 100 per cent of his efforts in one direction.
Talking of which, One Direction’s success is a prime example of Business Genius focus in action.
Simon Cowell’s usually too smart to stress about who’s going to win The X Factor; he prefers to focus on who’ll be the real winner after The X Factor. In an article by journalist Claire Beale entitled ‘One Direction: a classic success story with a twist’, for example, we learn how Simon (and his former chief marketer at Syco, Mark Hardy) were not that interested in creating another boy band, but they were very interested in creating a ‘youth brand’.
Hardy went on to explain that, ‘The best brands are built on listening and responding to what your audience wants,’ so, during The X Factor, their primary focus was ‘monitoring the social media profiles for all The X Factor contestants as early as two months before the final’. In other words, it wasn’t necessarily the most ‘votes’ that mattered in their minds; it was the most ‘buzz’ (on Facebook and Twitter) that mattered. No wonder Cowell once said that, if you truly want to succeed in an industry as tough as the music industry, you need ‘steel in your eyes!’
USEFUL TIPS AND
ESCAPE STRATEGIES
So, if you genuinely want to UP! your focus – and achieve more Genius moments at work – here are three practical tips and strategies that can help:
1 FIND THE ONE
It can be easy sometimes, especially for creative types, to end up charging ‘full steam ahead in all directions’ (Al Ries, marketing professional and author). If you really want to make progress in business, however, it’s often important to ‘go small’.
That’s why Gary Keller and Jay Papasan (authors of the best-seller The One Thing: The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results) argue that ‘extraordinary results are determined by how narrow you can make your focus’, citing Google’s focus on ‘search’ as a prime example. So, next time you’re racing around like a headless chicken, why not take Keller and Papasan’s advice and pinpoint what they call your ‘lead domino’. Target that, and then – rather like this ‘/////////’ – a chain reaction of multiple benefits flows from there. So, with this in mind, please answer their supreme focus question:
Q1 What’s the one thing you could do today that by doing it everything else would become easier or unnecessary?
2 DON’T BOIL OCEANS
Top management consultancies often pride themselves on their ability to help businesses focus on what matters most. And one of the reasons they excel at this is because their focus is strategic.
Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, for example, recommends we ‘Don’t boil the ocean!’ – because time is money, and we don’t always need to know ‘everything about everything’ to progress. Far from it. What we do need to be able to do is ‘distil’ information effectively, rather than ‘drown’ in it.
That’s why KPMG uses the strapline ‘cutting through complexity’, and placed those words on the side of a commuter catamaran on London’s River Thames to help promote their consulting services (now that was Business Genius!).
Anyway, please consider this within the context of the work you do, because – as Sir Terry Leahy (the former CEO of Tesco) writes in his autobiography Management in 10 Words – often in business the solution is ‘quite simple’: Make things simple.
So, perhaps have a go at approaching this next focus question like Sherlock Holmes (who used to find the solutions to problems ‘elementary’):
Q2 If you were to sum up your key workplace objectives using McKinsey’s Rule of 3 (i.e. firstly, secondly, thirdly or A, B, C) what would those 3 elements be?
3 FLEX WHEN NECESSARY
Most business literature on focus is all about what psychologists call ‘distraction control’.
In other words, it’s about businesses working out precisely what they’re about and where they’re heading, and then making sure they go there without getting blown off course. Chris Zook of Bain & Company, for example, has written about this in his book, Profit from the Core.
Personally, I think it is sound advice, and I’ve often used a technique I call the NEMO Technique, which can help in this area.
The NEMO Technique simply means – in any given situation – you keep telling yourself ‘Nothing Else Matters’ except for the O, which you then picture as an archery target! But let’s leave that aside for now, because there’s one other focal point we haven’t mentioned yet: the dangers of over-focusing!
Like Captain Ahab (in Moby Dick) or, it could be argued, like the Tour de France cyclist Lance Armstrong who was so focused on winning (at any cost) he lost all sense of perspective, sometimes focusing too much can cause as many problems as focusing too little (as we’ll explore in more detail later).
That’s why focus experts like Tony Robbins and Paul McKenna don’t just say, ‘We always get more of what we focus on’ or ‘Whatever you consistently think about and focus upon, you move toward.’ They also make clear how important it can be to ‘change our approach’ if something isn’t working.
So, by all means ‘hold the goal’ in the work you do, but also make sure there’s some wriggle room, too, in how you get there.
After all, many successful companies now work in a different sphere of business to when they started out: Virgin, for example, originally sold mail-order catalogues; Sony originally made rice-steamers; Nintendo made playing cards; and Nokia was in the wood pulp business.
Taking this into consideration, here’s a third and final focus question for you:
Q3 Is the focus of your business still the best focus for your business, or does it need flexing?
Sadly, many organisations have ignored this question at their peril, and fallen into the trap of strategic drift (like Blockbuster UK and Clinton Cards). So, if you really want to travel the path of Business Genius, do your best to become ‘bi-focal’ (as American author and management expert Ken Blanchard advocates): ‘Keep one eye on the present, and one eye on the future.’
By the way, if you really want to UP! your focus I’d also suggest you have a good chat with highly focused people you come across on your travels. Find out what works for them and then – using exaptation – explore innovative ways of applying these insights back to your own unique situation.
Here are two examples of my own, which may be of interest:
1 JON CALLARD (KICKER FOR THE ENGLAND RUGBY TEAM)
Someone I know called Jon Callard (who was the kicker for the England rugby team: 1993–1997) told me that different kickers would invariably use their own preferred focus technique.
One, for example, would focus on the line of his kick; another would focus on a head in the crowd and aim for that.
The secret of Jon’s focus, however, wasn’t sight but sound.
In a stadium full of many thousands of people, he found that sound was the ultimate distraction, so he’d focus on a different sound to blank it out. ‘When I was kicking,’ he said, ‘there was only the ball, the posts, and me. Nothing else. My primary focus was the sound of my foot hitting the ball and listening to whether it made a “pop” sound (which I wanted) or a “slap” sound (which I didn’t).’
So, here’s a thought for you. If you were the Business Genius you aspire to be, what might that sound like? What specific words might others use to sum up your amazing business results? What key business messages would you most want others to hear?
2 HUGH GRIFFITHS (FORMER RAF TORNADO FAST-JET AVIATOR AND TACTICS INSTRUCTOR)
Someone else I know, Hugh Griffiths (who used to fly Tornado Jets for the RAF and now runs Inzpire, a business-performance consultancy), suggested another highly effective way for sharpening focus: ‘In an emergency it’s critical to focus on what’s truly important!’
‘In Hollywood movies, for example,’ Hugh explained, ‘when a plane’s in trouble, you see pilots flicking all kinds of switches and screaming out “Mayday, Mayday”, and usually yelling some instructions to the person next to them. What happens in reality, however, is very very simple. You keep telling yourself to fly the plane.’
Yes, it might sound unbelievably obvious, but, as Hugh explained, there have been examples of pilots who have been so busy focusing on the emergency, they’ve forgotten to ‘fly the plane’, and the plane’s accidentally stalled at 38,000 feet!
Within the context of your own Business Genius focus, you may want to apply a similar strategy.
Of course the work you do isn’t literally going to be the same as flying at speed at 200 feet off the ground with an engine on fire (or, at least, let’s hope not) but the underlying principle is equally relevant. Or, as Hugh puts it: ‘The principle of “fly the plane” is very relevant in business. All too often organisations focus on profit or sales, but cashflow can be critical. You need oil in the engine to keep in the air!’
So, once again, focus and keeping things simple appear to be inter-connected, especially when the pressure’s on. This is why, in an emergency context, RAF pilots are trained to ‘aviate, navigate, and then communicate’ (in other words, ‘Keep the plane flying, then point it in a safe direction, and then tell others what’s going on’). Who knows? If this powerful simplicity works for them, it may well work for you …
BUSINESS GENIUS IN ACTION:
NEXT STEPS …
In summary, if you want to UP! your focus, here’s how:
- Pinpoint what fruitful focus and fruitless focus mean to you (to help you focus on what matters most).
- Investigate how your current tasks link up to the bigger picture (to avoid the trap of ‘septic focus’).
- Leverage the power of NEMO, Nothing Else Matters (to strengthen your ‘distraction control’).
- Orchestrate a plan for focusing that fits your personal preferences (to make it easier for you to leverage the power of sight or sound, so you can stay on course).
- Target the one thing in your day that will have the greatest impact (to create a positive domino effect on everything else).
And, above all else, remember to ‘Fly the plane!’.
UP!SPIRATION
‘Concentration is the key to economic results.’
Peter Drucker (writer, professor and management consultant)