Tuesday, June 1, 2010

This time, the choice is real - revisiting focus

BLUF: Knowing you have to work on just ONE priority until it's complete, what will it be? This time, I'm not asking a hypothetical question...

Every now and then I pick up one of my favorite management texts, Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive, and re-read a section - the book gets better every time I do this! This week I re-read the chapter "First Things First", and it prompted me to write a second post on focus (see Focus Grasshopper for the previous posting).

The primary message in this chapter is two fold:
  1. Effective executives focus on one or (at most) two things at any one time and complete them before moving to the next major area of focus
  2. Sloughing off yesterday - in order to focus the effective executive leaves behind unproductive initiatives no matter the investment in them to-date or remaining work to complete them
In the last post I asked the hypothetical question, "If you could only use one form of communication as a leader, what would it be...?". That, plus my reading of the Drucker chapter led me to ask the following question in this posting - "Knowing you have to work on just ONE priority until it's complete, what will it be?". Modifying the question slightly to reflect Drucker's wisdom you could say, "Knowing you have to work on just ONE priority until it's complete or unlikely to produce any tangible results, what will it be?".

So - what will it be for you? I can't really tell you what my ONE item of focus is at the moment, as it's related to competiveness in the industry I'm in. I expect the same will be true for many of you. Still, even if you can't say what the one item is, I'd really like to hear your thoughts on the concept of this type of laser focus.

(as a side-bar, I started this post off with "BLUF", which is short for "Bottom Line Up Front". I originally picked this term up from my favorite management podcast, Manager Tools. Hopefully "Bottom Line Up Front" speaks for itself, however, for more info take a look at BLUF (communication). I'm going to start off all my posts with this from now on. Keep me honest in case I forget!)
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3 comments:

  1. Phil WillisJune 1, 2010 at 8:52 PM

    Unless you're an individual contributor, it's rare that you would only have ONE thing to focus on.

    Even then - it's very hard.

    Having said that - there is a certain satisfaction in saying: "That is done" and moving on.

    Bringing something to completion - and then moving on the next thing adds to your momentum and keeps the ball rolling.

    Great post.
    --Phil

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  2. Mark DunnJune 6, 2010 at 10:28 AM

    Thanks Phil.

    I agree that no-one ever has just one thing that they can focus on. The difference is choosing to focus on just one. That doesn't mean nothing else gets done, just that a leader needs to make sure that people in their organization are doing the items that cannot be dropped and that those people are aware of the expectations for completing that work. Effectively doing this allows the leader to spend the majority of their time on their biggest area of focus.

    Ironically, I'd say this is actually least possible for the individual contributor, as there's usually no-one to delegate work to. Then it's a case of establishing agreed priorities with their leader.

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  3. GabrielleAugust 1, 2010 at 2:42 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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