Focus on What Matters

I’ve had the opportunity to be part of a few companies at various early stages of their corporate life. In the early stages I think a valuable lesson can be learned, which has value to more mature organizations as well, and which is difficult to appreciate if you haven’t been early in a business.

Focus on what matters. Get to cash.

In the earliest stages of a business a lot of things need handling, but first and foremost comes the strategy that produces income. Yes, other stuff needs attention, to set-up the basic efficient infrastructure to run the business, but what matters is getting to cash. Infrastructure – people, processes, websites, etc.—should serve this purpose.

For each individual contributor, it can be easy to get caught up in doing a job, and forgetting or confusing tasks that seem urgent, rather than stepping-back and focusing on getting to cash.

Land those first customers and make them really happy, and then build on that happiness.

In a larger organization, it helps a great deal to practice Jack Stack’s Open Book Management. If that isn’t part of your large organization, use your own deductive reasoning to find a clear line of sight between what you do and how you impact customer success and collection of cash.

Enough blogging… time to get back to what matters!

cw