Say “NO”

Say “NO”

The best businesses and their teams are often defined by what they choose not to do.

It’s tempting to take on new projects, new features, new geographies, new speaking opportunities… Each one incrementally sounds like a good idea, yet collectively they end up distracting the team from their focus on the core business.

Venture Capitalist Mark Suster advises teams, “The scarcest resource in your company is management bandwidth. Spend it wisely.”

Strategies are great but the implementation thereof requires ample capacity. When businesses take on too many new projects or opportunities, they run the risk of being ‘a mile wide and an inch deep’

Every extra project makes demands on the team. Every company is built by a team and every team member matters. A few key people in any business have disproportionate impact on the company’s ultimate success. And nobody is more important in this regard than the leader and the senior management. These people need to be hyper focused on those things that matter the most to the company’s success.

Of course business is dynamic and needs innovation and expansion constantly, but each additional complexity you add before you’re ready decreases your probability of being truly excellent at the things you want to do extraordinarily well.

What do you want to excel at? How will today’s “toe in the water” initiatives distract you or take your management’s time or attention off of your core business? How likely is your, “won’t take too much time” initiative going to come back and bite you?

“What’s the worst that can happen if you don’t take action on this item now?”