In this issue: Why strategy is about sacrifice. How a single goal can unite an organization and help drive everyone forward. And why we all need to resist the temptation to try and pursue more than one priority at any one time.
Experience
I often haven’t told people who reported to me, what I really thought about their performance, over my 25 year career iFiguring out which strategic initiatives to prioritize has always been a grind for me. It felt like everything was equally crucial, all the time.
I used to think this wasn’t a problem. Like a glutton at the buffet, I’d pile on as many strategic to-dos as I could onto my plate – and my team’s plate.
Better branding storytelling? Important. Cleaning up MarTech and AdTech infrastructure? Important. Boosting RoAS from ad investments? Important. Staff training? Important. Cohesive data infrastructure? Important. Streamlined planning cycles? Everything was ‘important’.
I was fine with my teammates juggling multiple strategic priorities on top of their regular jobs. I even praised a teammate for handling seven priorities at once, thinking they were a ‘go-getter.’
Then I realized we never got anything truly ‘done.’ Sure, we achieved some priorities, but none with excellence.
Now, instead of asking ‘what are the objectives to focus on this year?’ I ask ‘how many initiatives should one person work on to make an impact?’
The answer? One strategic objective at a time, per person.
1. Uno. One.
Not seven OKRs per person at a time.
Just one.
Reflection
It’s been a tough pill to swallow, this ‘less is more’ philosophy. I like ‘more’. More just seems better! Maybe it’s from growing up in communist Poland, with endless lines and not much of anything.
But today, I have one priority. My team has one priority. Every single person at the firm defines just one priority to focus on right now.
Why? Because two priorities are ten times worse than one. With a single priority, there’s nowhere to hide. No excuses about other distractions because there aren’t any.
We’re convinced ‘focus drives impact’. It’s a core belief here. Doing fewer things well beats doing many things poorly. One initiative at a time means it gets done faster and better.
When I share my one key initiative with the team, the impact is bigger.
But there’s a dark side to this obsession with focus.
I have to say ‘NO’ to distractions, sacrifice or postpone other important initiatives.
And I have to empower my team to do the same.
It’s much harder to say ‘NO’ to many good ideas, than to say ‘YES’ to just one idea that I am going to be all-in-on at this one moment.
References
A meta-analysis of 51 articles about interventions designed to improve teamwork produced some very convincing conclusions. Teams with a single, well-defined objective were found to be more effective in achieving their goals compared to those juggling multiple objectives.
In their work A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance Locke and Latham highlight the importance of setting specific and challenging goals. They also prove that focusing on a single key objective allows Leaders to set a more specific and potentially more challenging goal, which leads to better performance.
In his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson also argues for the importance of prioritizing and saying no to unimportant things. He finds that focusing on a single key objective makes it easier to identify and eliminate distractions and less important tasks.
Meanwhile in their study The effect of goal setting on group performance: A meta-analysis, authors Kleingeld, van Mierlo and Arends indicate that individuals and teams perform better when they have one primary goal to focus on. The study suggests that trying to achieve multiple goals can actually dilute effort and attention, leading to suboptimal performance.
Finally Thomas Rudledge in his book SMART: An Evidence-Based Formula for Goal Setting, critiques the traditional SMART goals approach and suggests that singular, clear, and challenging goals lead to higher performance. The study highlights that single, specific goals provide better direction and motivation than multiple less-defined ones.
I made my point. Less is more. Focus drives impact.
So that’s my one rule.
One strategic initiative, at one time, for every one person.
Self-reflection for this coming week:
What would it ‘cost you’, what would you need to sacrifice, what would be the downstream consequences, of each member of your team committing to a single strategic priority at a time (and treating every other seemingly ‘important’ initiative apart from ‘the committed one’ as purely aspirational).
If you’d like to discuss your career journey with me one-to-one, please feel free to email me at Greg@moveupfaster.me or message me on LinkedIn.
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