IMPORTANCE OF FOCUS

 IMPORTANCE OF FOCUS

How often we come across a situation when someone starts a discussion on an issue and soon we find that the subject has digressed to so many unrelated topics. It is so amazing that despite such a development most of us don't recognise this digression and get caught up in the discussions on new topics till someone points out we have moved away from the original subject. Today I want to share with you the Importance of Keeping Focus.

Whether an entrepreneur discussing a business problem or a manager discussing a situation it is imperative to keep Focus. The focus should be on the core subject under discussions and any temptation to go around to other related topics should be managed so as not to lose focus.

Let me explain with a few examples. A small business man met me other day with a request to help him grow his business by addressing his marketing problem. When I met him first I asked him to give an idea of what his business is all about and what his present customer profile looked like and what volumes of business he has from each of them and what spare capacity he has. I also needed some idea about his costing, pricing and competitors' information. In the course of discussing these he started narrating his problems with getting reliable labour to work in his factory and other problems relating to managing his business and after about 20 minutes of listening I had to remind him that we are discussing his marketing problem for which we must first focus on the market related information to take some basic decisions and then we can go inside his factory and address his operations related problems.

In another instance, we were working in a large manufacturing company implementing a Business process reengineering concepts in their supply chain management process. While collecting background information the discussions veered round to the need for accuracy of sales forecasting and soon we had a spectacle of the production executive and the marketing executive picking up a big fight over how each of them in their opinion is foolish and don't know how to do their job. Very soon as consultants we had to bring order and get the team to focus on the subject in hand and help defuse a potentially explosive situation.

Why do we lose focus? It is not that everyone wants to lose focus. But in our desire to communicate the issue, sometimes we feel it is important to share other related information which we believe may have bearing on the issue at hand. There is nothing wrong with this except that these related issues should not end up becoming the main issue. That is the main problem in keeping focus.

Another reason I found we lose focus is when someone in the group feels that the related issues are more important than the main subject under discussions and tries to steer the discussions towards them. Here the personality of the team members come into play. A dominant member of the group has a tendency to hijack the discussions in whatever directions he wants and most of the time after the meeting is over other members would privately express their resentment to this but would not dare to intervene during the meeting to bring the focus back.

Some time I found that the problem definition has not been articulated properly hence there is a scope for digression as the discussion goes on. I will illustrate this with an example. In a very large company we were working on a culture transformation exercise and formed cross functional teams around different problems they were addressing. One of the team was working on the condition of the toilet facilities in the factory at various locations. When we started the exercise we asked the team members to define the problem. While it looks ridiculous now to ask what is the problem in the toilet facilities, at that time we found the five team members from various departments who had stake in the upkeep of the factory toilets spent first full day listing out the problems based on their departmental perspective which essentially said that we are doing our job but other departments are not. As a part of the culture transformation process we allow deliberately in the first sitting to let everyone say what they want to say and simply ask them to document everything that is said without any debate. As the session progressed in the first one hour they listed more than 50 problems and by lunch time they had reached nearly 200 problems when some one in the group started observing that each member is presenting the problem from his perspective whereas the problems listed reflects the issues faced by them created due to the way other departments worked. This realization suddenly made the team members come out of their adversarial positions to an accommodative position when every one said that the real problem lies in the combination of the problems listed so that they can define a single problem which is the problem that they need to address. The team got its Focus right and from then on  the exercise became very meaningful and rewarding for all.

The lack of Focus leads to waste of time and also frustration as the real problem does not get addressed. Quite often it is useful to have an outsider in a discussion unrelated to the problem under discussion so that he can act like an umpire, bringing the focus back and reducing waste of time. But it is not possible to have an outsider all the time. Hence it is important to cultivate a habit to get your focus right whether we are involved in a discussion or engaged in an activity to address a problem.

I have presented here a few perspectives so that this topic can form a basis for a good discussion in this forum. I would like to invite readers to present their own perspectives and views on this subject.