Some days I feel like I have the same conversation with client after client — today it was about focus. All came to me with a variation on the story “I/my team/my organization are exhausted — we have been keeping up an extraordinary effort and feeling like we are making no progress”. As they described to me all the priorities and activities and programs they were trying to implement my head hurt — and much of what they described had no “life” to it.

I began to explore with each why they were doing so much. Each activity seemed to be justified by one of the following criteria
- we are funded to do it
- we have always done it
- I have hired people to do it
- our managers expect us to do it
- people have become used to getting it from us
- it might look bad if we stopped doing it
Unfortunately, very few of the explanations involved excitement or passion or because the effort was critical to the mission of the organization. More it seemed like people were just too afraid to deal with the consequences of stopping.

This is not a recipe for success!

I encouraged each of them to undergo some variation of the following process:
1) List everything you (your organization) is doing. Then “editorialize” for each, describing why you started doing it, why you are now doing it, how you feel about doing it, etc.)
2) Put your list away.
3) Describe, with as much detail as you can, your “desired future” — what you would like to be doing, feeling, what impact you would like to have — in 3-5 years.
4) Now look back at the list of current activities. Which, if any of these, will directly make a strong (4 or 5 on a 1-5 scale) contribution to your desired future? Why? Don’t choose more than 5 items.
5) What gaps does that leave? what major areas need to be addressed (in addition to the activities listed in #4) to attain your desired future?
6) Combine your answers to #4 and 5 into a list of “key initiatives”. These should be the activities you (or your organization) put the most energy into to ensure you make progress toward.

Now look at everything else on your list of current activities. Force yourself to classify each as
- an activity I should discontinue
- an activity I should hand off or outsource
- an activity I should do differently so that it doesn’t take much of my energy

Look at your new list of focus areas. How do you feel about spending your time here? Don’t be surprised if there is some anxiety — part of the reason you are still doing those things is because they are “comfortable”, familiar, easy…they represent the path of least resistance. But your new list represents the path to success.