Single Minded Focus

If I asked you, ‘What is your single most important objective in your work’, would you be able to give me a rapid-fire response? Or would you have to think about it?

I got thinking about this recently and I didn’t have a quick response. It took some thought and consideration, which to me, revealed a problem.

In business it’s very easy to get side-tracked. Focus is king and in the course of doing what I do, I see many entrepreneurs flounder because they’re caught in a merry-go-round of distraction of [insert your bright shiny object here].

Peter Thiel is famous for his unorthodox management philosophy of ‘extreme focus’. In the words of former PayPal executive Keith Rabois, Thiel “would refuse to discuss virtually anything else with you except what was currently assigned as your #1 initiative.” If you tried to have a meeting with him to pitch a new idea, it wouldn’t have even made the whiteboard. Thiel wouldn’t discuss anything but your top initiative.

This one goal should be the irreducible force that if achieved, makes your business just work.

With one of my team recently, we boiled this down to him booking two sales appointments, every day of the week, every week of the year. When he does that one single thing, our sales people make sales, we have money to deliver the product, pay the rest of the team, cover operational costs, make a profit and be successful. The whole system just works, when he does that one simple thing. Consistently. Every single day.

Until that’s done, everything else is a distraction.

Now he has a big number 2 written on an A4 piece of paper on the wall and looks at it every day. It’s his single most important objective to hit that number of appointments every day. When he’s done, he can focus on anything else, knowing that he’s done his bit to make the company successful.

My question to you is, what’s your #1 initiative? What’s your irreducible objective that, when executed, makes your whole organisation just work? Whether you’re a sales person, in operations or the CEO — you have something that sits at the top of the pyramid that dominates your successful contribution to the business.

Clarity breeds consistency and consistency breeds success.

Get clarity as to what that is and the rest should take care of itself.