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Focusing for Results in Leadership

“A large part of wisdom is knowing what to ignore. A large part of expertise is knowing where to place your attention,” writes Shane Parrish in his newsletter. James Clear also suggests that “focus is the art of knowing what to ignore.” One significant issue in leadership is focusing on too much at once. While leadership and creating change involves many aspects, leaders often take too many actions. Here is a five step process to narrowing the focus: 

  1. Data: To narrow the focus for results, leaders must gather the data and understand what information matters. Gathering and analyzing every aspect of the data provides clear insight to the baseline. Analyzing this data gives the leadership team a clear idea of what areas might need more focus. It’s critical to remember that leaders can’t focus on all the data, so they must narrow in on key areas. What data is the most valuable and critical for improvement?
  2. Goals: Developing a clearer focus requires taking the data and developing actionable goals around improving it. Leaders cannot improve every aspect of the organization at once. Because goals allow leaders to pinpoint the needs, those goals need to be the north star for all the actions taken in the organization. How clearly do you develop goals that drive change?
  3. Strategies: While the goals provide direction, the specific strategies help drive the change necessary in the organization. The challenge, however, is that most leaders often implement too many strategies and do them all at a very average level. Determine 2-3 high-impact strategies and commit relentlessly to those specific strategies. If eventually you find out they’re not working, then adjust and continue the process. How narrow do you focus your strategies for change?
  4. Amount of Change: Many leaders fall into the trap of trying to make too much change too quickly. What happens when leaders implement many changes is that none of them work and people become discouraged and stressed. To create positive change, people need to focus on a few changes at a time to avoid spreading out their bandwidth. How much do you limit the amount of change? 
  5. Audit and Revise: As the process unfolds, highly-effective leaders continuously evaluate the strategies and the data; then, they revise the strategies and amount of change if they’re not on track. Sometimes, leaders allow the process to continue without evaluating whether it’s working or not. What happens is that they get a year down the road and realize they’ve made no change at all. How often do you evaluate and revise the strategies? 

The difference between highly-effective leaders and everyone else is that they narrow their focus to create change. These leaders develop a system for creating change that includes analyzing data, developing goals, and implementing strategies. Where some leaders struggle is that they attempt to make too much change over a short period of time. Some leaders also fail to audit and revise their process. 

How well do you narrow your focus in order to create lasting change?