Every business planning strategy should start with a KISS. No, I’m not talking about making out with your business partners or even your potential customers, although that may be another blog and business plan itself. In addition to a display of affection or the name of a popular rock band, KISS is also an acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid and something that most businesses tend to forget.
The way in which you can tell your focus may be in question is if your vision or mission statement contains a conjunction. Grammatical conjunctions should NOT be a part of your vision or mission statement: “and”, “but” and “or” will not get you very far in terms of success but will only dilute your focus and potentially any chance for success. So if your mission or vision contains any of these three words, I invite you to reconsider your focus. In my experience the best chance of initial success will come from doing one thing better and/or more differentiable than anyone else. But how do you know what is that one thing?
Just start with two questions:
- Describe a situation where you were so passionate you were almost consumed wit the need to do this: you started early, stayed late, forgot to eat lunch and even jotted notes to yourself at 3am; not because you had to, but because you wanted to; you were felt subconsciously compelled.
- Describe the opposite situation: the job you wanted to start late, finish early, take a long lunch, play golf, spend time talking about the last episode of your favorite reality show.
This exercise will uncover that which you are most passionate about and give you the starting path for maintaining a singular focus. I learned this lesson in the late 1980’s thanks to the autobiography of Tom Monaghan (founder of Domino’s Pizza) called Pizza Tiger. Published in 1986, this book describes the rise and “almost fall” of a business that started with a singular focus but strayed from that plan only to recognize the mistake and take the necessary actions in time to ensure ongoing success.
The compulsion to do more than one thing may be strong so you will need to either:
· find a unifying higher order value proposition,
· reduce the clutter to one thing
· or take your chances with the thousands of other businesses who failed thanks to an initial lack of focus.
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