Focus and Work As one grows a business, so the possibility of work overload increases. There are many keys to business success, and in this series, we will look at a number of topics and then open them up for discussion on the applicable Webo forum. This topic is available on video on the Webo video forum. To start let's look at two important keys to getting your business growing. Focus and Work. The bigger the organisation, the more the focus of leadership should be on its people, and the focus of the organisation should be on its core competency. Can one create focus? Absolutely. The most common levers to achieving focus are Strategy, Structure and Leadership. To illustrate, it is no accident that Nike focuses on shoe design. They own no shoe factories. Large organisations embody many cause and effect loops, but the key to high performance lies with leadership. As the organisation gets smaller, it gets more complex. With growth, it is often tempting to try and do too much, for leadership must do everything! Most importantly, leadership must find a balance between strategy and structure and in doing so it will find focus. Yes, hard work is universal to success, but you must also enjoy what you do so that you achieve the status of being what has been called a "worker-frolic" rather than being a workaholic. Balancing Focus and Work so as to have a manageable workload is critical to sustainable work performance. Work intensity (going that extra mile) and work pressure (demand vs. capacity) are key indicators of the balance that exists between Focus and Work. How does a small business work less, yet do everything and meet a growing demand? Often, the answer to work overload is focus. Focus on your core competency and outsource the rest. Should you too not be working on design instead of loading boxes for delivery in your factory during your lunch break. As an alternative to growing the size of your permanent staffing when faced with a growing business consider process mapping your business and finding what you can get someone else to do. Do you need to run your payroll and or accounts, online store, website, factory, etc.!
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