Jim Collins, the author of the cult business classic Good to Great, earns applause when he lectures about focus and "stop doing" lists.
He suggests an interesting thought experiment:
"Suppose you woke up tomorrow and received two phone calls. The first phone call tells you that you have inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second tells you that you have an incurable and terminal disease, and you have no more than 10 years to live. What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?"
When every day is a fight to spend more time on the things that matter, you can easily forget that deciding what not to do is equally, if not more important.
Yes, learn to take away stuff.
Simplify.
Eliminate ruthlessly.
When you say "no" more often than you say “yes” you’ll have a chance to do fewer things better.
You're probably thinking, yes, I know all that, so what?
Well, if you know it, how come you don't act like it?
How come you join Zoom meetings where instead of subtracting complexity you add it?
Remember 80/20?
Doing more and more things is the exact opposite of the Pareto principle.
Businesses that turned themselves from mediocrity to excellence made it because many of the big decisions were not what to do, but what to stop doing.
In 1948 Dick and Mac McDonald found out the vast majority of their income came from just three items on the 27 item menu.
You’ve guessed that right - it was hamburgers, fries and drinks.
Moving against the conventional wisdom of 'the more choices you offer, the more customers you get’, they dropped everything else off the menu so they could serve those three things better and faster than anyone else.
The rest is history.
Jack Welch gained fame for getting rid of GE businesses that, no matter how profitable, could not be number one or number two in their industries.
Exploiting a competitive advantage of being the best allowed him to build a synergistic combination of star businesses.
Peter Drucker’s signature concept was about abandoning the things that didn't work and concentrating on the things that produced results.
As he wrote in his book, “All living organisms must have a functioning system of elimination...or they will soon perish.”
Amen to that.
In 1997, Steve Jobs had just returned to Apple and found himself answering questions from developers at Apple’s conference when someone raised the topic of "OpenDoc," a piece of software that Steve decided to kill upon his return.
"You think, “well, focusing is saying yes”. No, focusing is about saying “no”. Focusing is about saying no. And you’ve got to say “no, no, no”. When you say no, you piss off people. “ - Steve Jobs
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
It’ll keep you from doing too much, too soon.
Being able to say NO is the mark of a strong leader.
In business, you’re facing endless decisions.
While some are harder than others, they all share one common principle.
Every decision is a choice.
A trade-off.
You can’t possibly say YES to everything.
In choosing one thing, you deny another.
Saying NO is an acknowledgment of the trade-off and a decision that you will not compromise on something that matters to you.
That's the power of focus.
Without it, you're doomed to a life of distraction.
As you move from one shiny object to another, you may get lots of things done, but few things ever get done well.
To do great work, the work with more meaning and more impact, ask yourself: If I’m saying YES to this, what am I saying NO to?
The beginning of the New Year is a perfect time to consider a “Stop doing” list to allocate the most precious of all resources: time.
Anyway, this is my rant.
Thanks for reading it.
P.S. Happy New Year to you all.
We may not be out of the woods just yet, but in the distance the trees are thinning.
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