Let me hazard a guess at how you respond when someone asks how you are, or how your week is going?
“Busy.”
That’s the default reply these days.
We’re all trying to do so much, but the bigger question is…is it effective?
Are we mistaking activity for progress; multitasking for agility; and wishful thinking for ambition?
And if we are, what’s the antidote?
The importance of focus cannot be overstated, as it is the foundation of any successful startup, where resources and time are even more limited than at more established businesses.
Let’s set the scene.
Imagine you’re alone in a deserted wood, the night is set to be cold, and you need to make a fire. Thankfully, you have an axe to hand. What do you do?
If you hack at the tree randomly, it will take you a long time to cut it down. It’ll be even worse if you get distracted and start hacking at new trees, just because they look easier, or like they’ll provide more wood. This approach will lead to you being exhausted, and spending the night frozen.
However, if you focus your energy on a specific area of one tree, you can make a dent and start to see progress. It still won’t be easy, but by concentrating all your energy in a single spot, you’ll fell the tree and enjoy a nice warm campfire that evening.
In the same way, if you focus your efforts on a specific goal, you will make progress faster and more efficiently. Yet almost everyone gets naturally drawn to the former approach.
Now there’s a lot of good material out there already on how businesses can – and should – be more focussed. And there’s equally a lot about focus and productivity for individuals, often in the context of being an individual contributor, or life outside of work.
But what about managers and leaders? Whether you report to the CEO or you’re a few levels away from that, if you have a boss and a team of direct reports, the difficulty of generating focus in your working life is a constant fact.
It takes enormous energy and discipline to not get pulled into a million different directions, from attending to the needs of your direct reports, to the demands of your peers and other department heads, to the often fluctuating priorities of the CEO and the evolving strategy of a rapidly growing business.
So, what’s a leader to do?
Here are 5 proven tactics you can leverage to stay on track, focussed and even energised in your role.
Tip 1: Apply the RICE scoring framework to your inbox
RICE Scoring is a prioritisation framework that helps you evaluate and rank potential projects or initiatives based on their Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort required.
Here’s how it works:
- Reach: How many people (or customers) will be affected by this project? The more people, the higher the score.
- Impact: How much of an impact will this project have on your business or goal? For example will it add revenue or save money, and if so, roughly how much? The higher the impact, the higher the score.
- Confidence: How confident are you in your ability (or that of your team) to execute this project successfully? The higher the confidence, the higher the score.
- Effort: How much effort will it take to complete this project? The lower the effort, the higher the score.
To use RICE scoring, you can assign a score of 1-10 for each of these factors and multiply them together to get a total score. This will help you prioritise your projects or initiatives based on their potential impact and feasibility.
One company that has used RICE scoring successfully is Dropbox. They used the framework to evaluate potential growth initiatives and prioritise their product roadmap.
By focusing on high-scoring projects, they were able to grow their user base from 100,000 to 4 million in just 15 months.
For you as a manager, stack rank any new initiatives or projects that get proposed to you (whether they’re from your team or on high) and use this as an objective way to either push back, or reprioritise as needed.
You could even develop a ‘maximum RICE’ score count e.g. at any given time, you can only take on 100 points worth of projects (based on the above scoring mechanism), which means a few high scoring initiatives, or slightly more lower scoring ones.
Tip 2: Sort you existing to-list using the Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower matrix is another powerful tool for prioritisation. It helps you divide tasks into four categories based on their urgency and importance:
- Important and urgent: These tasks should be done immediately.
- Important but not urgent: These tasks should be scheduled for later.
- Urgent but not important: These tasks should be delegated to someone else.
- Not urgent and not important: These tasks should be eliminated.
To use the Eisenhower matrix, you can list all your tasks and categorise them based on their urgency and importance. This will help you focus on the most critical tasks and avoid wasting time on low-priority items.
It certainly helped the former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who famously said, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” By using the eponymous matrix, he was able to focus on critical tasks like managing the Cold War and the Space Race. Not a bad outcome!
This is a great tool to use in 1:1s with your line manager (right up to the CEO) so they have visibility on what you’re working on and how you’re prioritising your time. And by having them take a look, you’re gaining their approval (and explicit agreement) to focus on the most important tasks at hand.
This is a handy record to build consistency and transparency into your ongoing performance conversations.
Tip 3: Learn to say ‘No’
Saying “no” to a CEO or line manager can be challenging, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.
‘Managing up’ is super important as a leader, and if you can learn to communicate respectfully and clearly, then it’s less likely that you’ll be pulled from pillar to post.
Here are some tips for politely communicating to your boss that you need to focus:
1. Explain your workload: If you’re already working on multiple projects or priorities, be transparent with your boss about your workload. Explain the amount of time and effort required for each task, and the potential impact on your ability to deliver high-quality work if you take on more tasks.
For example, you might say: “I appreciate the importance of this new project, but I’m currently working on several other high-priority tasks. I’m concerned that taking on this additional project could impact my ability to deliver quality work on all of my current projects.”
Remember, most CEOs are incredible at the level of detail they can hold about almost all aspects of the organisation, but they’re not omnipotent and therefore you shouldn’t assume they have the level of knowledge on your projects that you do. Help educate them.
If they still deem it necessary to switch tak, then you have to remain flexible, but be sure to have that trade-off clearly documented, so it doesn’t come back to bite you later.
2. Prioritise: Be clear about your priorities and what you believe is most important to the company’s success. This will help your boss understand your perspective and the reasons for your decision.
For example, you might say: “Given our current goals, I believe that it’s important to focus on X project first because of Z. If we shift our attention to this new project, it could delay progress on X and impact our ability to meet our goals.”
Part of your job is to have an informed, expert opinion and share how that related back to the overall strategy.
3. Offer alternatives: If you’re saying “no” to a request, be prepared to offer alternatives that could help address the issue. This shows that you’re invested in finding solutions and contributing to the company’s success.
For example, you might say: “While I can’t take on this new project right now, I could help by connecting you with someone on the team who has the bandwidth to take it on. Or, we could explore ways to reprioritise my current workload to make room for this project.”
You could also suggest a different time horizon i.e. Sure, I’d love to pick this up right after X project is finished. How does that sound?
Tip 4: Keep a record
Writing down what you’ve been working on can help you to focus in a number of ways:
- It helps you keep track of what you’ve accomplished, making it easier to recall your progress and maintain momentum (and morale)
- It helps you identify what’s most important and prioritise your tasks accordingly. This can help you avoid distractions and ensure that you’re focusing on the most critical tasks. The process of writing tends to tease out fuzzy or poor ideas, leading to clarity and therefore a more robust and actionable to do list.
- It helps you reflect on your progress, identify areas for improvement, and track your development over time. You’ll start to see patterns that will support continuous development.
To improve how you track your work and stay focused, here are some techniques and frameworks you could use:
- To-do lists: Writing a to-do list is a simple but effective way to track your work and stay focused. You can organise your tasks by priority or deadline, and check off items as you complete them. (Just don’t delete them…having a ‘done list’ can be incredibly satisfying to review every now and then!)
- Daily journaling: Journaling is a great way to reflect on your progress and track your development over time. You can write about your accomplishments, challenges, and insights, and use this information to stay focused on your goals. This is also a wonderful way to to track and recognise any emotional fluctuations that accompany your work too.
- Time blocking: Time blocking involves scheduling specific blocks of time for certain tasks or activities. This helps you stay focused on one thing at a time and avoid multitasking, which can be a major distraction.
- Kanban boards: Kanban boards are a visual way to track your work and stay focused. You can create a board with columns for “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done,” and move tasks from one column to the next as you complete them.
- Goal tracking: Setting and tracking goals is a powerful way to stay focused and motivated. You can use frameworks like SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) to set goals that are both challenging and achievable, and then track your progress towards them over time.
Ultimately, the best technique or framework for tracking your work and staying focused will depend on your individual preferences and working style. The key is to find a system that works for you, and stick with it consistently over time.
Tip 5: Delegate
One of the surest ways a manager gets distracted and unfocused during the working week is not from a capricious boss or ever-changing strategy…it’s by taking on too much work from their direct reports.
Very often, your team will come to you with challenges they’re looking for help with. But instead of providing some guidance and letting them figure it out, too many managers try to be helpful by taking the challenge on themselves, only to become a blocker in the process.
There’s a whole book on how to avoid this which I’d highly recommend, called the One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, but in summary the key take-away is not to ‘accept the monkey’ which is your report’s problem.
Don’t say “leave it with me” or “I’ll sort that” if it’s not your role…instead give them some pointers or context on how you’d look to resolve the issue, and then ask them to take action and report back on the progress.
This way you can stay ‘above the fray’ and avoid becoming tangled in the weeds that will lead you to becoming a less effective manager.
In conclusion
Focus takes radical energy, and is probably one of the hardest things to master and maintain.
But the rewards of achieving real focus are massive.
As Warren Buffett said:
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”
If you want to be a highly effective leader, try some (or all) of these tips to declutter your working week and achieve more productive progress than you thought possible.