How to Create Focus in a Growing Company

Research & Sources / Leadership & Decision-Making

Ask any gardener about fruit trees and they will tell you something that sounds wrong at first: if you want more fruit, you have to cut branches off. A tree that is never pruned grows wild, spends its energy on leaves and shoots, and gives small, few fruits. Growing companies are like that tree. Growth brings new branches every month. Without pruning, the energy spreads thin.

How growth eats focus

When a company is small, focus comes naturally. There is one product, a few clients, a small team, and not enough time to do anything else.

Then success arrives. New clients ask for new things. New employees bring new ideas. Opportunities appear everywhere: another market, another service, a partnership. Each one makes sense on its own. Together they pull the company in ten directions at once.

What strategy experts say

Harvard strategist Michael Porter argued that the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. Companies that try to be everything to everyone end up with no clear position at all.¹

The large execution study by Donald Sull and colleagues found that many managers in growing companies could not name their top priorities, partly because there were simply too many of them.² When everything is a priority, nothing is.

And Mankins, Brahm and Caimi showed how much hidden time companies lose to meetings and coordination that no one ever decided to spend.³ Every new branch brings meetings with it.

How to prune

Name the core. Which clients, products and activities make most of your profit and are most aligned with where you want to go? Those are your strongest branches.

List everything else. Side projects, small products, special client requests, “strategic” initiatives that never got going. Put them all on one page.

Ask three questions for each. Does it serve the core? Does it make real money? Would we start it today if we were not already doing it? If the answer is no three times, it is a candidate for cutting.

Cut in the right season. Gardeners prune at the right time of year. In a company, the right time is a clear moment: the start of a quarter, the end of a contract, the annual planning.

The fear of cutting

Pruning feels like loss. Every project has someone who cares about it. Every small client was once a big win. Cutting can feel like admitting a mistake.

It helps to see it differently. You are not throwing away the branches you cut. You are giving their energy to the branches that will bear fruit. People usually feel relief once a few things are cleared away, because they finally know where to put their effort.

Keep a “not now” list

Not every good idea has to die. Many simply have to wait. Keep a “not now” list where good ideas are parked for a later quarter. This makes saying no much easier, for you and for your team.

What this means for you this week

• Write down your core in two sentences: who you serve and with what.
• List all active projects and offers on one page.
• Apply the three questions and mark at least two items to stop or park.
• Start a “not now” list and share it with your team.

Pruning is not the opposite of growth. It is how growth turns into fruit.

Sources

1. Porter, M. E. (1996). What Is Strategy? Harvard Business Review. hbr.orgStrategy means choosing a unique position and deciding what not to do; operational effectiveness alone is not strategy.
2. Sull, D., Homkes, R. & Sull, C. (2015). Why Strategy Execution Unravels and What to Do About It. Harvard Business Review, March 2015. hbr.orgSurvey of nearly 8,000 managers in more than 250 companies: execution fails less from poor alignment than from weak coordination, and communication is not the same as understanding.
3. Mankins, M., Brahm, C. & Caimi, G. (2014). Your Scarcest Resource. Harvard Business Review. hbr.orgOrganisations rarely budget time the way they budget money; one recurring meeting can consume hundreds of thousands of hours a year.