Loosing Focus, Or Can You Say NO?.

Yesterday a business friend of mine contacted me with information about an interesting business deal. I had a look at the information and began to think of ways to make this work. In short, I was interested to do something about this opportunity.

This morning I got up and started looking through my RSS feeds and I found a post on David Maister’s blog: Can you say NO? He says:

[...] One of the saddest mistakes businesses make is that by stressing growth and volume (goals that are almost sacred in most companies) they are inescapably, unavoidably inevitably led to compromise their own strategies and turn themselves into undifferentiated organizations that look like everybody else.[...]

Hmmm, that hit home. I think this is a very important lesson to be learned, you need to focus on your business, because let’s be honest, I do not have enough hours in the day to run my own business, and now I am thinking about getting involved in another business.

Further down the line David also says:

[...] there’s a difference between “Let’s make money by delivering on our strategy” and “let’s make money any way we can.”[...]

You should read his post and his article on his website: Strategy Means Saying “NO”.

I will say NO to my business friend, sorry, but I will stick with my strategy!

Thank you David for your timely advice.

Tags: Accountants, Business Development, Business Mentoring, Business Start Up, Entrepreneur, Home Business, Micro Business, Sales, Selfemployed, Small Business, smb, sme, sme-blog

One Response to “ Loosing Focus, Or Can You Say NO?. ”

1. Bowling Balls For Sale
   
   Said on November 11th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

   Invariably every business, large or small, struggles with focusing on their core businesses. I look at core businesses like formulas. You have a formula, that you know works. You work that formula. You perfect that formula. You are successful with that formula.

   Then you are distracted by opportunities outside you formula. You are mildly successful. But, the next thing you know your core businesses are faltering because you have ignored them.

   You see a lot of this with big companies seeking bankruptcy protection.

   Your core is your strategy, it works for you, stick with it and prosper. Get distracted and you increase your risk of not being as successful as you would like.

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