Stay Focused on the Main Game

As a business owner you are the focus of all incoming demands on your time and attention whether or not the demands are solicited or unsolicited. You are also the owner of “the buck stops here” label, so you probably also feel the burden of responsibility for staying on top of all relevant knowledge and other readily available information, so that your business can remain competitive with your immediate, as well as emerging, competitors.

As hard as it is to do, it is imperative for the ongoing success of your business, for you to remain totally focused on the main game, and not get distracted or sidelined by unsolicited demands for your time, or through allocating far too much of your limited available time, to attempting to know and understand everything you believe you need to know and understand, in order to stay in front of your competitors.

One problem commonly experienced by business owners is that they have never really decided what their main game is, and as a consequence, they devote far too much of their time and energies to activities for which they never see an adequate financial return, one commensurate with the time and energy devoted to those activities.

If you fall into this category, it is beholden upon yourself for the sake of your business and your own peace of mind, to review your current business activities, make a clear decision as to what in future will be the main game of the business, and then focus as much energy as you can on preparing a strategic plan for the future of the business, and then to developing a clearly focussed business plan that will facilitate the eventual success of the chosen business strategy.

Should you already be perfectly clear on the main game of your business, but the business is not living up to its potential, then it is highly likely that a lack of focus on this main game due to the constant demands on your time from others as well as the need for you to be the resource and information gatherer for your business, is a key reason for the under-performance of the business.

The following are a few suggestions that you might consider implementing in your business to ensure that, at all times, your major focus is on your main game, and not on participation in all of the sideshows to that main game.

• Implement a policy of only conducting face to face meetings by appointment, and limit these appointments to only people who can clearly be seen to have a real and positive contribution to make, in assisting you to win at your main game.

• Hire a “bulldog” as a gatekeeper to ensure that those attempting to circumvent the appointment process, only ever attempt this tactic once, and without success.

• Let everyone you deal with know the actual nature of your main game, and ensure that they are clear on where you would welcome their input, but equally clear that outside these boundaries their input will not be entertained.

• Learn to accept that you cannot possibly, regardless of the industry you operate in, personally ever acquire all the knowledge needed to run a successful business, and be prepared to import expertise, as and only when actually needed, and then only for specific well defined tasks.

• Realise that the vast majority of information that circulates and is always at your fingertips if you want to seek it, or is constantly being pushed and marketed to you incessantly even if you are not seeking it, is in the main stuff you already know, just repackaged, relabelled, pushed through new mediums or by new gurus, and really adds little value to your business.

• Use a media monitoring service to deliver to you a weekly tailored package of information published about topics specific to the information needs of your business, and allocate no more than an hour or two each week to digesting the information provided.

• Have someone else open your incoming mail and make sure they clearly understand that the only thing you want to see in your in tray is real business mail, and only then, if that mail is clearly and directly related to the activities of your main game.

In making sure that your deliberate focus is on your main game, and you are not wasting time and effort participating in sideshows, you will not only make a far better personal contribution to the success of your business, but you will also send a clear message to others, as to where they should be paying the most attention.

Are you as focused as you should be on your main game?

Do you have strategies in place to help you stay focused on your main game?

Is everyone associated with your business aware of what the main game is and where they need to put their focus?