One critical skill for successful business transformation

Focus is a skill. That means — it is something to learn.

There are different ways to do that. I acquired mine by learning to eliminate distractions. Living in a dorm with three other roommates made me pretty good at it.

One of my former bosses, an experienced CEO and a PE operating partner, used to say “don’t overthink it”. He was driving focus on simplification. Similar to Steve Jobs.

So, to learn to be focused — mute the distraction, simplify the process.

What does this mean in real life?

Let’s assume a goal of running a marathon. To achieve that, one needs to run almost daily, which often means waking up at 5am. Being focused on the goal would assume:

1. ignoring rain, wind, cold, birthday parties — eliminating distractions

2. ignoring impromptu questions your brain might ask i.e. “should I stay in bed and go later” — removing complexity (an additional decision node) from the process.

Simple? Yes. Easy? No.

One of the biggest consulting firms published a research showing that circa 70% of business transformation projects fail. I can see this being closely connected with lack of organizational focus: often in transformation we see a lot of noise, “urgencies” and “emergencies” that get a lot of attention, as well as a tendency to repeatedly make the same decisions.

This is why capacity to stay focused and disciplined, steer the team towards the real target and leave the rest in the parking lot for later is a critical functional skill in leadership transformation.