BLOG: The three biggest problems of all boards: Focus, Focus and Focus

While the main topic of the meeting may be product portfolio, raising funding or even eminent cash crises, I feel many of the situations originate from one root cause: lack of focus.

I’ve had the privilege to work with far more than 10 companies in the past couple years developing their boards and management teams, and I’ve seen quite a few problems and different teams tackling them. While the main topic of the meeting may be product portfolio, raising funding or even eminent cash crises, I feel many of the situations originate from one root cause: lack of focus.

Perhaps the company has overextended functions, customers, geographies too early on. Perhaps the company tries to make all things at once; even if all the activities separately seem easy or even trivial the combination of them is everything but. As an analogy, throwing and catching a ball is trivial – trying to do the same with 5 balls at the time, juggling, is not.

What would be optimal? Choosing the battles carefully. For a small company, trying to identify as tight a niche as possible to concentrate on, and create the most value-add on that single piece first. Partner or outsource other topics as needed. As the company grows, perhaps it makes sense to in-source some of the activities due to economies of scale or scope.

Startups are generally good at thinking about their Minimum Viable Product (MVP): what is the bare bone, vanilla product that would be creating significant value to the customer while testing the critical business assumptions with minimum effort (and investment). The same should apply not only to the products/services, but also to the operations of the company: what is the minimum the company must do to add value and prove the business case is viable.

Typically talking about the focus and trying to identify what is the most important thing also leads into discussion about Shareholders Strategy – what do the shareholders want of the company? It’s good to have that cleared rather early than late to be able to focus on the essentials and have the shareholders – and the board – aligned.

To me, focus is typically the most scarce resource: lack of focus will also lead to lack of other resources. Try juggling with the balls: keeping one in control is easy, second start creating problems and for many the third will cause failure. I feel the priorities should be the same: one critical one, second important and all the others optional if at all. Once the priority tasks are cleared, it’s easy to take the next ones. Simple, is it?

Teemu Polo
#AgileStartupBoards
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tapolo/

» The Shareholder strategy template