Focus: A Double-edged Sword?

Well, we’re into the second installment of my response to an e-mail comment from Pete Caputa. Pete and I have been chatting via e-mail making sure we were ok with what was being said. We have both decided that we really don’t mind any criticism and think there’s a lot more to be learned by dissecting our mistakes together in public than simply hogging all the hollering. Ultimately, constructive criticism is indeed a form of support, if not the most important kind.

Which brings me to focus. Most everyone who knows me well will tell you that my mind moves all over the place. I’ll be the first to admit I suffer from entrepreneurial ADD. I don’t know how to not generate ideas and test the edges of the things I am working on. It’s my nature to second guess myself, perhaps to a fault.

Those same people, however, will tell you that in the last year or so I truly did have my head down in a significant manner as I focused on the conference business - I know since they bothered to mention it to me. We’ve been through quite a bit on this side of the fence, more than I could ever explain but I am planning to share some of that knowledge in the next couple of installments.

Needless to say, I think that focus can be a difficult thing to manage. If you follow my friend’s advice, you would seemingly keep your head down and fight the good fight. That’s right to a certain extent. I liken it to following a scent on the trail. You can focus on the scent as much as you want, just make sure you’re not walking off a cliff to stay with it.

As a young startup, agility is one of the main assets we have available to us. n Most often, however, we attribute that agility to our “feature set” and get tunnel vision with our direction. It’s important to self-correct when necessary - the key being to know when that course correction is needed. We were in a situation like this with syncPEOPLE. It didn’t matter what we wanted to sell, we were getting different information from the customer and we couldn’t ignore it - you almost never can. I’ll expand on that tomorrow.

Today, I’ll share a different example. I met Pete through my blog some time in 2004. The very first time I met him in person, I happened to be in his area and popped in to see how things were going. During that day, we went through his product, WhizSpark. I was looking through the interface and general usability, providing any input I could. It was my opinion that the app was probably too hard to use and could use some significant tweaking to ease the user processes. I offered as a possibly better option that they could simply do the work for the client, essentially using the system on their own and selling the service.

There was pushback on both fronts. The code was committed which meant, for reasons only they can explain, that they couldn’t change it. Why not? I still don’t know the answer but I left it alone. As for the service route, well, they had committed that they were making a do-it-yourself solution. They didn’t want to be in the service business (though it was clear they already were). That was then. Today, almost 2 years later, they’re offering a service option.

Could this have happened earlier? Of course. Could they have made more money with it? Maybe. Was focus an asset or a hindrance in this situation? That’s for you decide.