In an age where information and perceived success is a mouse click away, how do you filter out the distractions? How many times has an executive read an article or talked with another business owner and immediately turned to the team for information? Even worse, how many times has it caused internal staff to shift focus and direction to chase the next product or solution that will finally generate the revenue and profit you’ve always wanted?
The above scenarios are all too familiar in business today. With social media and marketing campaigns targeting consumers and business prospects, everything seems so easy to adopt and weave into your business. In the past, we’ve written about the necessity for vision and strategy to drive business decisions and performance. If you can’t step back and state how a new product, solution, or shift in focus will help execute your vision and strategy, IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN A DISTRACTION.
What happens when squirrels are not a part of your company’s vision and strategy?
Your employees experience burnout for multiple reasons.
1. Everybody wants to be part of a winning team. Often it is your key employees that you entrust with carrying a new initiative forward. When these actions are nothing more than distractions, they soon dissolve. Unfortunately, not without tremendous efforts by critical staff members to make it work. Those staff members soon get burned out chasing squirrels they will never catch.
2. Your employees likely already have other critical tasks on their plate that are core to the business vision and strategy. When new distractions come in from the left field, they often must increase their hours to vet these new ideas properly.
3. Depending on the size of the company and where the new initiative is being driven from, are other departments rallied around its success? For example, an engineer may develop a solution that they believe is amazing but is Sales and Marketing onboard?
Your existing customers suffer due to lack of focus, delivery, and ultimately the customer experience.
1. While your teams are focused on the next great thing, does their number one priority remain the customer? Unfortunately, in most cases, the answer is no.
2. This can lead to a slippery slope as customer dissatisfaction increases the revenue decreases that is ultimately helping fund these distractions.
While diversifying your business is rarely a bad idea, ensure you are focused on chasing the right things. There are too many companies that want to be a one size fits all solution. Put simply; it doesn’t work. To the contrary, organizations that focus on being excellent at what they do win in the end. When you focus on excellence and delivery, your customers will tell your story and become one of your biggest champions!
Make it a point to maintain a strong focus on aligning your business operations with your vision and strategy. Always ask yourself, “how does what I am doing lead towards the execution of our vision and strategy.”
We live, breathe, and eat strategy. We also love to share what we know. Give us a shout and we’ll be happy to help you eliminate unnecessary distractions.