“Way too many good ideas are slowly sinking your strategy.”
Hey Rollers,
I was going through some old LinkedIn posts last week and found one from 2021 where I suggested every business should have a HoF. Not The Hoff, although having David Hasselhoff in your leadership meeting would be interesting. A Head of Focus.
The idea was simple. One person on the leadership team whose job is to keep asking one question: does this decision keep us inside our focus, or take us away from it?
I wrote it with founders in mind, because shiny object syndrome is very real when it’s your own business. Five years on, I think it applies just as much to corporate leadership teams. In fact, every leadership team.
Here’s what I see. A team goes away for a couple of days, does the hard work, and comes out with their shortlist of clear priorities. Everyone’s aligned. Then Monday arrives. A new opportunity lands, someone senior has an idea, a competitor does something, and each one sounds reasonable on its own. Nobody wants to be the one saying no to a good idea, so the new thing gets added. Not swapped. Added.
David Packard said more companies die of indigestion than starvation (Verne Harnish made the line famous in Scaling Up). And he nailed it – I don’t think it’s usually bad ideas that sink a strategy. It’s too many good ones.
That’s why I like the idea of giving the job to one person. Everyone on a leadership team believes in focus. But when focus is everyone’s job, it tends to become nobody’s job, and in the moment the person with the most energy for the new idea usually wins. A Head of Focus gives someone permission to be the slightly awkward one in the room. To say, “I think that’s a good idea. What are we going to stop to make room for it?”
That question matters, because the job isn’t only guarding the front door. Most teams already have a few zombie projects. Priorities that aren’t really alive anymore but somehow refuse to die. They’re not moving, but they’re still eating time, energy and headspace. A good Head of Focus is just as interested in what should come off the list as what’s trying to get onto it.
It doesn’t need to be the CEO. I actually think it works better if it isn’t, as long as the CEO backs them when it counts.
We all know we should keep the main thing the main thing. The hard part is having someone in the room whose job it is to notice when it isn’t.
So maybe The Hoff wasn’t such a bad shout after all. Every strategy could do with a lifeguard.
Until next week.
Keep rolling.
Justin 👊
Take Action in 3 Minutes:
Look at your team’s current priorities, or your own.
👉 What’s been added in the last 90 days without anything coming off?
Pick one thing to stop, park or kill this week, and tell the people it affects.