What do good photographs have in common with achieving desired business results?
I recently went hiking in the Arizona desert where I saw many beautiful things including cactus, lizards, flowers, rock formations, petroglyphs, sunsets, and hot air balloons. As a very enthusiastic, but novice, photographer, I wanted to capture EVERYTHING and I took hundreds of pictures. Each evening I looked through the pics I’d taken that day and picked out my favorites. The results surprised me. The pics I expected to be the best, those where I strategically included multiple elements, ie – 3 types of cactus, a blooming flower, AND a small lizard, never made it to my favorites folder. The composition of these pics seemed like a winning combination when I visualized them in my head, but the results were disappointing. So what consistently made it to my favorites folder? My best pics were those where I intentionally focused on just a small piece of the larger landscape, ie the single pad of a cactus.
So what does my desert photography experience have in common with achieving business results? FOCUS. Even though it was counter-intuitive, I got my best results when I said “No” to photographing all but one good thing at a time. Businesses also improve their results when they give special attention to only one or two important goals at a time. It’s not that the other goals are not good ideas, or are not important, but it’s been shown over and over again that results are achieved faster, and sustained longer, when energy is not diluted by undertaking too many initiatives all at once.
If you want to explore focus in more depth, you might enjoy one of my favorite business books, The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney and Sean Covey. And you know from my website that I love quotes, so here’s a good one about focus from Steve Jobs, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
So how many beautiful things are your trying to highlight in your photographs? How many goals are you trying to give special attention to in your business? If more than one or two, chances are high that you are frustrated, and that you can improve your results by narrowing your focus.