What does focus really mean?
It may be one of the most-provided pieces of advice, and yet, it could mean a dozen different things, or nothing at all
Has someone ever told you that you your company/department/team should focus more? Or take the reverse, has anyone every said "you know what, you should focus a bit less?" Probably not right?
But what does that actually mean?
Focus became real for me back in June of 2017.
I was a few years into my time at Instacart and it was my first week back from paternity leave. I was trying to push through some cardio, a headline flashed on the gym TV screen: Amazon Acquires Whole Foods. It was going to be an interesting day.
At the time Whole Foods was Instacart’s largest fulfillment partner as well as a direct investor. I practically lived in Whole Foods Markets up and down the west coast as we worked with our shoppers there. Immediately, and understandably, many pundits rushed to declare Instacart a loser to sign Instacart’s death warrant while also punishing other grocery stocks.
While I admit I’ve haven’t been the biggest fan of the “peacetime / wartime” analogy, the next 6 month period at Instacart was the clearest distillation of focus that I’ve ever seen. While others have written about this special time (CFO Ravi Gupta’s blog is a must read), what was unique to me is that every single person in the company knew exactly what they had to do at any given moment to achieve our shared goal, and was maniacally working to do it, which in our case meant, not dying.
When I think back on that time, I keep coming back to the idea that we were just so damn focused.
“Focus” has become on of those somewhat generic pieces of advice that’s never capital “W” wrong, but it’s also not really actionable.
Focus could mean a million different things from “you should have fewer goals” to “you need to communicate your goals better.” They sound similar but have very different resulting actions plans. And to get really down to brass tacks, it often means your advisor thinks something is off, but isn’t really sure how to help you.
If you happen to be told that you need to focus more, don’t just nod and move on, follow up:
Can you say more about focus?
What in your mind is suffering due to this lack of focus?
What would great focus look like and how does that differ from what you perceive presently?
You might uncover a nuance that can be really helpful. Or you might get some word salad that lets you know maybe you should get a second opinion.
Fundamentally, the main goal of a leadership team is to get a group of people to work on the things that drive the business forward. Whether you’re in the Fortune 500 or the local PTA, any organization of human beings is most effective when efforts are aligned in a common direction. This is generally easy (easier?) with small teams, but as an organization grows, the question for any leadership becomes: how do I get this group of people to focus on the “right” things when I can’t be there over their shoulder telling them every second?
My Instacart experience helped me to crystallize a personal definition of organizational focus. Focus is a shared language. It’s the the trust of “I’m doing my job and I know you’re doing yours.” You often hear of focus as “narrowing the aperture” and that might work at the micro level, but not always at the macro level of a large and growing company.
Focus is playing in tune.
It’s the cohesion and common purpose. It’s each individual playing their role, with the instrument that they have, and not looking of their shoulder to make sure their partner is doing the same. It’s everyone reading the same sheet, knowing exactly what they need to do as a unit, where the crescendos and diminuendos are, and playing, or strategically not playing, perfectly in sync with each other. In can be calm, frantic, optimistic, or tear-jerking, but it’s complementary, it’s harmony, and it’s magic.
Changing your OKRs, defunding projects, or simply “doing less” won’t magically make your company “focused.” At the risk of brutalizing the orchestral metaphor, you need sheet music, you need the right tools and the right talent, you need the conductor to set the pace, and you need each musician to know where their role fits into the broader composition.
So how to develop and maintain this capability, ideally without having a competitor buy one of your biggest partners?
Visions over laundry lists: Start with a set of goals or objectives that is so direct and plain English that you could explain it to your grandmother. My lukewarm take is that it doesn’t need to be hand-over-your-heart inspiring and having it be unique is a nice-to-have (there are other items like value that should be unique). “Achieve the benchmarks to raise another round and stay solvent” works. It just needs to be something clear that the team can rally around, and that efforts around the company can link back to (foreshadow!)
Link up every effort: A lot was written a decade so ago about how millennials cared about having purpose with employment, which led to Adtech companies with mission statements about how they’re making the world a better place. Cool. But I do think it’s reasonable for every function to understand clearly how their daily work contributes the company’s broader goal. Further artifacts and work product should include this link-up by answering the questions: Why are we doing this and How does it link up to our larger goal. It won’t solve for every person (Legal, IT, I sometimes struggle here), but feeling like we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves is the antidote to going through the motions…even if it’s not changing the world.
Make the don’t do list: If leadership is not aligned on what matters and what doesn’t, months will be wasted by teams working on the wrong things. The added value of complementary efforts will be totally lost. Most companies clearly articulate what they will do, but few are specific on what they won’t do. It must be communicated with care because it is likely’s someone’s baby, but someone working on the wrong thing should be as jarring to everyone around them as an errant horn.
Say it until your blue in the face, and then say it some more. It’s been written that a founder or leader needs to say something 7 times before it sticks. Full co-sign. At Instacart during the period described above we moved All Hands meetings from monthly to weekly and each one started with the same priorities. Everyone knew what the goals where. Everyone. Conversely I once asked a founder if I stopped by and asked a random group of team members what the company goals were, would they all give me the same answer? Their response: I’m not sure that’s important. Not surprisingly, different team members were working on different priorities and they unfortunately under-achieved their goals. The important things should be repeated and reinforced across the surface area of the company. We know our brains can only hold so much information at time, so decide what the important things are and embed them everywhere.