“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred of other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” – Steve Jobs
Recently I was in a business planning session with one of my clients. The CEO and leadership team were struggling under the weight of an unrealistic number of priorities. I knew that their lack of focus would lead to failure in execution. I drew a priority matrix with ‘Impact’ on the X-axis and ‘Ease’ on the Y-axis.
We then charted out all the priorities to determine which ones would have the greatest impact and have the highest probability of achievement. This enabled the team to determine which projects should be initiated going forward and which ones should be delayed or stopped.
In last week’s post I talk about simplicity being one of the keys to drive clarity in an organization. A leader needs to make the complex simple in order to increase the speed of understanding and implementation for his/her team. Dr. Henry Cloud talked about Necessary Endings as the first boundary to bring simplicity during the Chick-fil-A Leadercast and in his book by the same name.
Cloud talked about the fact that the worst thing a leader can have is hope that the wrong road, the wrong strategy or the wrong person will lead to the right one. It’s necessary to go through a pruning process. He used the analogy of the rose bush and talked about how experts prune in three contexts.
Too many buds
If a rose bush has too many buds it cannot sustain itself. The expert pruner looks at the best buds and prunes the rest. As a business leader you need to look at the number of things you are doing in your business.
Reflect: Do you need to prune some products, projects, maybe a business segment? What needs to be pruned so that the best buds can thrive?
Sick branches
There are some branches that are sick and will not get well. Sometimes the season has passed. We, as leaders, sometimes get so invested in something that we don’t realize the season has passed and we need to pull the plug. Kodak didn’t pull the plug on print photography soon enough. Or, how about an employee that may have been productive when the business was smaller, but has not grown with the company and is now drawing nutrients from other branches.
Reflect: What branches in your business are past their prime and need to be pruned?
Dead branches
There are some branches that are dead and are taking up space. Maybe you can’t let them go because you feel that you might need that branch in the future. In business, Cloud calls this a “hoarder mentality.”
Reflect: What products are you holding onto that you haven’t sold in two years? What technology is sitting around taking up space because you think you might need it in the future?
Pruning is a necessary part of business. It requires discipline, but ultimately leads to health and growth.
Share Your Thoughts: What pruning do you need to do in your business?