I was reminded of one of the most important and fundamental issues in business management this week. It also happens to be from my experience the No.1 reason why businesses fail - and I have seen a number of them in my previous professional experience as an accountant and in my own failed creations.
The issue is to keep focused on what I want to create, rather than get caught up with someone else’s perspective. This sounds really simple and at its heart it is simple. However to do it can be really challenging. To explain what I mean and how it could matter to you, here’s a simple example.
We have been developing a new website and the web developers haven’t been meeting the deadlines. This has created a great deal of tension for us and them. This tension hasn’t been enjoyable to experience.
At first there was some blaming going on. Naturally each of us wanted to blame the other party for being the cause of it. Once we realised that wasn’t going to get us anywhere and would only further exacerbate the issue, we stopped and asked what was really going on.
A friend of ours who is highly successful in business came over the discuss an unrelated issue. When we explained what was going on he succinctly told us that the problem was because we were not focused on the outcome. My partner replied quickly - “how can that be true? I know what I want and have been focusing on it.” He so simply said “If you were focused on the website being live then it would be live. It is that simple.”
When we reflected on what had happened it was obvious that while we focused on getting the website live, we also entertaining the possibility that it could be delayed. So we were not completely focused on the outcome we wanted. And that was what matters - where our focus was.
Our mistake was to listen to our own fears and what our web developers told us about the difficulty of the project and let that cloud our own judgement. This then caused us to give them mixed signals as to when we wanted the project completed.
That isn’t to say that what was going on for our web developers wasn’t important. On the contrary, it is important to keep informed on where they are up to. It is an entirely different issue to let their issues affect our vision.
Also their issues are for them to manage and deal with - they promised to do something within a particular timeframe and that is their challenge. For them to be successful they need to deliver on time and to specifications, which is to our benefit. If we are to support them to achieve this, us being clear with the outcome will support them.
Of course, as with any outcome there will be times when it is challenging to believe it will ever happen. Those are the moments that can be really painful and frustrating. Those moments are what I call re-focus points, and are crucial to being successful in any endeavour.
What I have found works for me is to ask myself each time - “Do I really want to create this outcome?” When I keep asking myself this question the answer I get to in the end is - “Yes! It really does matter to me and I choose to create it.” Persistence is the key in these situations as I sometimes have to do this many times over an hour or two.
While this approach generally works for me, it may not work for you and I recommend experimenting with an approach that works for you. I am sure that there are as many approaches as there are people on the planet. As I mentioned above, the key is to be persistent.
Over time it has gotten easier to refocus. Much easier and now I find I can refocus in a fraction of the time it took me a year ago. While I can’t prove anything, there seems to be a relationship between the amount of times I had to refocus on the outcome and the power of my fear about being successful. The lower my fear - the less I have had to refocus. However that’s the topic of future post or several.
In summary - when you have an outcome that means something to you, staying focused on that outcome is the key to creating it in the world. Taking any other perspective implies that it would be created and you can fill in the reason why below.
Why the Project succeeded: I was focused on the outcome!
OR
Why the project failed: __________________________________________
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