Focus
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🔎 Close Your Eyes, and Picture the Word ‘Focus’
What comes to your mind?
To my mind comes a thought about ‘locking in’. About looking directly at some object or project, and about giving that one ‘thing’ my undivided attention.
Especially in a business context, the concept of focus might provoke similar feelings for you. Feelings of prioritization, of well-channeled energy, and of flawlessly executing a task to achieve an important goal.
But what else is focus about?
Perhaps most importantly, focus is about saying no to 100x more things than we say yes to.
This is incredibly hard to do.
Saying no is much harder than saying yes. It means dissapointing others. It means missing out on the dopamine hit that comes with chasing new ideas or impressing customers or partners. It means giving up on strategies that we perceive as safety nets should things go wrong.
But success requires focus. And focus requires saying no. We need to push ourselves to say no, far more than we say yes.
There is perhaps no better source of encouragement for making this necessary sacrifice than that of Apple and Steve Jobs.
A masterclass in focus
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late 90s, the company was about two months away from bankruptcy. Most CEOs in this position might think about adding things - adding new products, or people - to turn things around. But Steve eliminated things, aggressively. He largely attributed his saviour of Apple to saying no to (and canceling) most of the products that the engineering teams had been working on.
“I know some of you spent a lot of time working on stuff that we put a bullet in the head of. I apologize, I feel your pain…Apple was executing wonderfully on many of the wrong things. When there’s this sort of distraction, the total is less than the sum of its parts.”
Steve further defined his philosophy of focus:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
A few years after he passed, they released this beautiful ad. It’s worth a watch.
The net benefit of saying no
Many of us think that saying no is a necessary evil without much benefit. But it’s actually a ladder to a more beneficial outcome.
Think about what Apple has created. And now, think about all the possible products and services that Apple - with its ginormous bank account and workforce of talented and curious engineers - could have created. Had they said yes to all of those ‘coulds’ and ‘shoulds’, would their product quality, and brand experience, be what it is today?
Will Ahmed founded WHOOP - the advanced screen-free fitness tracker - in 2012. WHOOP bands are not as mainstream as Apple Watches, but they’re deeply loved by their wearers.
In the clip below (which yes, I did stumble upon through an endless scroll-session of Instagram Reels), Will explains his decision to build the tracker without a screen. It’s a great example of how saying no to what feel like inevitable features can actually make the core product so much better. Not only because you have more time to focus on the core stuff, but because new constraints aren’t introduced. Focus breeds simplicity.
Focusing inside your business
As you wrap up this issue of The Dolphin, remind yourself that saying no can yield incredible results. It frees up energies and resources to make your existing solutions better. Yes, it’s hard to say no. But as with most things in life, hard decisions and sacrifices are often the right decisions for the long-term.
While we still need to evolve and add and innovate as leaders, we can, from time to time, check-in to ensure we’re saying no to enough: to enough campaign ideas, or product extensions, or hires, or pricing tiers.
👋 for now, and keep an eye out for an email next week!
Best,
Jeffrey