Company Focus

Now that you know what everyone wants from the company, you have the building blocks for working out what the focus of your company should be.

A Company Focus is a statement that could include what you do, what you aspire to achieve, who you are as a group of people, and the attitudes you want to have. In essence it’s the stuff that’s so important to you as a group of people that it you want it to be the focus of everything you do, every waking hour, of every day.

You may well have worked for companies that had a “mission statement” that was supposed to define this. It might have been something along the lines of “We strive to be the best sewage equipment company in the UK, empowering our employees to create world class innovative solutions and deliver high quality services to our customers, while earning year on year growth in profits for our shareholders.”

I have two reactions to this kind of mission statement:
1. Yawn.
2.Pardon?

Apart from the lack of clarity and inspiration, I don’t like the term mission statement anyway, because a mission is something that you need to finish. Putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960’s was a mission. Once that was done it was done – and the US space programme has been lost without a real driving focus after that time. You need to set a focus for your company that will always be true, no matter which projects come and go in the meantime.

But it does need to inspire people.

When I worked for the BBC, the Director General, John Birt, said the BBC’s focus was to be “the most efficient public service organisation in the UK”.

“Yipeee,” I used to think, “I can’t wait to get in to work this morning and be efficient relative to other public service organisations!”

The next Director General, Greg Dyke, changed this for the better, saying he wanted the BBC “to be the most creative organisation in the world.” Doesn’t that feel more motivating and exciting?

At healthcare company Smith and Nephew their Company Focus is ‘Helping people regain their lives’. Here you have a very worthy purpose, but note that it’s not simply about saving lives, it’s about a wider benefit that everyone in the company can work towards for their sphere of influence. As a result the company’s human resources team is now making a large effort to help staff to achieve a better work life balance – helping them to regain their lives.

In deciding on the focus for your company it can help to avoid being too specific about the actual products or services, as they can change over time, and ensure that you’re focussing on the benefits that come about as a result of your work.

Disney’s focus is ‘Making people happy’. That’s very different to ‘making fun cartoon films for the whole family’. Their focus also allows them to have theme parks, shops and lots of other sidelines – but all focussed around the end result, the benefit, of making people happy.

To develop your Company Focus look through all the feedback you’ve received from customers and the talent. Are there any common themes? What are the perceived benefits of working with your company? What are the talent most proud of? What do they aspire to achieve?

It can be well worth spending some time planning a half day away from the office for all the talent so that you can all work on this focus together. You have to all want it, you have to all believe it, so why not all have some part in writing it? If you’re going to do this be sure to plan the agenda carefully. Start by outlining what a Company Focus is, how you are going to spend the rest of the session, and how you will all decide what the focus is. Then perhaps ask certain individuals (with advance notice for preparation!) to do brief presentations on different aspects – a summary of feedback from customers, a summary of feedback from the talent, a summary of what your competitors are like, a summary of future trends in your marketplace, examples of the Company Focus of other organisations, etc. Then do an exercise listing benefits you bring to customers and talent as an organisation before launching into a brainstorming session (possibly in different smaller groups). At this stage only write down all the ideas that come up, no matter how silly. Then bring all the ideas together and ask people to vote for three. You now have a shortlist. Finish the session there and give people some time to think about the shortlist before holding a final vote, or making your final decision, depending on your leadership style.

What is your Company Focus? Keep it really simple, but make sure that it will always be true, and that it is a worthy thing to aim for. You’re going to spend a large part of your life working towards this focus – it had better be motivating!

Keep the focus

That’s the hard work over, now the really hard work begins! It’s so easy to have done the work to identify your company focus, but then forget about it and lose the focus.

Your work as the leader of the company is mainly about keeping this focus, and we’ll look now at some ideas and tools to help you with this.

Imaginary friends

Did you have an imaginary friend when you were a child? Well now is the time when your skills of imagination are going to come in really useful. If you didn’t you’re going to need to practice this until the imaginary friends we develop for you are real enough in your head to have a conversation with.

There is a reason behind this step on the road to madness. These imaginary friends are going to represent your typical target customers. Imagining them so closely is going to mean they can be present when you make key decisions in your company.

To begin the process, work with your core team to identify a few different types of target customers. A web design company might supply start-up businesses, established small companies and departments of larger businesses. They would create three imaginary friends, one for each type of customer.

For each friend build up a picture of exactly what they are like. Give them a name, background, likes/dislikes, hobbies, job title, and so on. How much do they know about your industry and products? What is their average working day like? What other things do they have to do apart from work with you? Where do they like to spend time? What other products do they buy? Where?

If you are targeting consumers rather than other businesspeople, you can think about where they shop, how they use your products, what their leisure activities are and so on.

Make sure that you get to know these imaginary friends really well – and that everyone in your company knows them too.

Have them with you in meetings, when you visit your company’s shops or other facilities, and at any time when you’re making decisions about your business.

A simple trick like this will really help you keep focussed on what your customers want.