Focus is a topic that gets a lot of attention in leadership. Greg McEown’s book, Essentialism, talks about the pitfalls of trying to do too many things at one time. Prioritization is touted as an essential part of execution: getting things done. But most of what I read focuses on the leader’s vision and focus. What can a leader do to help others achieve and maintain focus?
One of the most challenging situations for me as a leader has been managing outside influences that distract me from my focus. The source of those outside influences? My own supervisors, aka the leaders of the organization. CEOs, presidents, and superintendents can unintentionally damage the focus of their team by peppering them with too many ideas. A visionary is an asset in an organization, but a leader who has vision but cannot bring it into focus can hold a whole organization back from progressing toward the envisioned goal.
After working with a number of visionaries, I coined the phrase, “Anyone can have a fresh idea. Few know how to execute that idea.” Here’s what happened. When I took a position with one organization, I had a clear idea of where transition services for our students should be headed. I was well versed on the technical side of things: I had read the research on transition for students with disabilities and what led to positive outcomes, I had extensive experience in providing transition services, and I understood self-determination and the need for students to have opportunities to function independently. I began looking for resources to implement these important principles and found many talented and enthusiastic individuals among the staff.
I worked under two different leaders while trying to implement my focused plan. One had a habit of coming back with new connections, new gadgets, new ideas, every time he was on a work trip. He would gather us together in an attempt to implement these new ideas—all of them.
The other decided to spread the information-gathering net wider, to hear new ideas from his own connections in the for-profit world. Each time a new idea was thrown to me, I was asked to investigate it. I became unable to move forward with the plan already in place as I had to repeatedly revise or abandon its details. I spent hours drawing new schematics, offering up new program ideas to meet the perceived priorities of my supervisor. As a result, I fell short both in my own initiatives and in those I was asked to initiate.
This issue became concrete when I was working on recertification for my professional licenses a few years ago. I started thumbing through my files of CEUs and other certificates of participation collected over my career, making sure I had earned enough credits to recertify. Acronyms and phrases started jumping out at me: EEI, SEI, PMP… each certificate evidence of the training du jour during that time period. I wondered: if we had actually stuck with one trend, trained well, determined desired outcomes, taken data, and adjusted our work, would we have made significant progress in educating our students? Instead, we jumped from one thing to the next, depending on the vision of the leader of the moment.
It’s clear that focus problems are not unusual in organizations. When I have brought the issue of multiple foci up to others in leadership positions, I have been constantly rebuked. I was identified as the problem: I was resistant to change—inflexible—stuck. And yet I feel that our lack of prioritization and focus consistently keeps us from meeting with success and growing more deeply as a field.
What can a leader do to help those around her maintain focus—to set a goal and stick with it? If you are the leader, encourage open dialog about each team member’s part in reaching an organizational goal. If someone who reports to you has a goal to achieve, support the process of meeting it. What tools, resources, skills, and support does he/she need to be successful? Ask clarifying questions. Expect and ask for regular report-ins so that you are part of the goal and its success. Remember that you are part of the team that will result in furthering your own vision.
And if you’re the visionary with a goal in mind, communicate your vision clearly, succinctly, and with an eye toward implementation. Help those who report to you understand their roles in achieving the goal, and support their efforts by listening to their ideas, providing resources, and redirecting if they veer too far off-path.
As a leadership stone, focus is foundational. It needs to be a big, sturdy stone on which others can be placed. But it is the one I feel is most out of my reach. We have increasingly become what I call a “bumper sticker society,” depending on one-liners and marketing campaigns to determine what is most important. If we are to make true, sustainable change in our organization or the field of education, we need to focus: to develop priorities and build structure around them. Be a leader: focus!