Staying Focused and Making Bets
I had a really great conversation today with a super smart individual. Whenever I can step away from a conversation / meeting knowing that I’ve learned something, it’s awesome. Today was one of those meetings.
One of the topics that came up was, with relation to a start-up, how imperative it is to do four things to give your organization the best chance at succeeding:
- Develop a vision and focus on it
- Place your bets
- Be heavily critical about the business
- Obsess about results
I know the term “vision” doesn’t always have the best connotations. I could easily see someone hearing the word and picturing those cheesy motivational posters hanging in SVP/EVP and C-level offices all over corporate North America. Take a look at the picture to see what I mean.
What I’m talking about is a very centered description of your business and what you are trying to accomplish. This isn’t a PHd or Masters paper here, folks. It’s a very clear and concise paragraph at most. You want something that everything else is aligned to - if you don’t have it, you are going to start spinning your wheels and going in circles; trust me on that one.
Once you have the vision (and yes, it can change - this is a start-up after all) you need focus. At the exclusion of all else, everyone in the organization must be 100% committed to executing that pre-defined vision. Your product roadmap must be committed to it. Your finance people must be committed to it. Your support reps, sales reps, etc…
If “really awesome / cool” product ideas start to seep into the culture, you’re sunk. Kill everything that exists that doesn’t support the vision and focusing on it.
Of course, let’s be realistic. You’re certainly going to want to assess whether your vision is attacking an appropriate market opportunity. If it’s not, that’s also a major cause for concern unless you know how to create new markets. That’s not entirely out of the question, but it is quite difficult.
Once these pieces are put together, you need to place your bets. You could be wrong. Trust me, it wouldn’t be the first time a start-up executed 100% correctly but failed due to external consequences (i.e., wrong market, wrong product, wrong timing, etc…). But if you can get something out the door that solves a problem for a set of people, are you light years ahead.
Again, and I can’t stress this enough, you very well may be wrong. Your board / investors have to be comfortable with the fact that not everyone hits a home run every time. Sure, take input - but don’t let things veer off course. Remember, you have to maintain focus in order to place a bet on the vision you’ve constructed.
OK, so say you get all of these things in place - what’s next? Well, you must be critical of the business. Let me repeat - “the business” does not mean “other people.” For example, you have an amazing quarter and are really rocking along (blowing away estimates, shipping stuff ahead of schedule, improving productivity, landing some key talent, etc…) how are you going to do better next quarter?
On the flip side, what if you have a horrible quarter? Don’t blame Jimmy in the mail room. Take ownership. Are you maintaining morale? Are you still maintaining your focus on the bets you’ve already placed? If not, you have some re-evaluating to do. Namely, identifying how things slipped off the rails during this time period. But always be heavily critical of the business. This dovetails into the next point…
Obsess about results. If you aren’t concerned with the results you are delivering, something is out of whack. If you can’t deliver the results you need to, change something. If you are delivering, see the previous point - heavily criticize the business.
Of course, this all may seem like common sense. I guess that’s kind of the point. It’s all the little things that really make the difference - and ultimately, being able to execute.
