Focused Resources = Maximum Results

Contracting is a relatively low-margin and high-risk business. Contractors can’t afford to spread out their resources on projects or in their businesses. Leaders must put maximum resources behind their biggest bottlenecks or opportunities.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share

 

Leadership Tools: Focused Resources equals Maximum Results.

 

Consider a dodgeball, softball, dart, or javelin. All are thrown by a human with similar degrees of energy. Of those four, which one has the highest likelihood of killing something if it were thrown at it?

  1. A dodgeball is larger, blunt, soft, and has little mass behind it.
  2. A softball has a decent mass to it but is blunt and not focused. In rare cases (3-4 per year), it tragically causes a death from someone getting hit in the head.  
  3. A dart is extremely sharp (focused) however it has very little overall weight behind it. For this reason, it can accelerate quickly like a person acting alone. This has advantages at times, but this is why initiatives championed by only one person usually fall short of their goals.  
  4. A javelin (spear) has a point that is sharp though not quite as sharp as the dart, yet it has a lot of mass behind the tip of the spear and therefore transfers a lot of the energy it was sent off with to the target.  

 

Look at every aspect of your business model and evaluate your focus. Look at where you are spending your time and where the business is spending its resources. How aligned are they around that focus?

Ask your key team members to do the same and compare your answers. 

Final thought - remember that speed is a competitive advantage once you have focus and the right resources behind it. All things being equal, a javelin thrown 2x as fast will go much further.

 



Related Training

Definition - Organizational Development (OrgDev / OD)
Organizational Development is an effort that focuses on improving the organization’s capability through the alignment of strategy, structure, people, rewards, metrics, and management systems.
Definition - Development (Talent)
Longer-term refinement of someone’s current capabilities Towards Mastery while preparing them for future roles and the ideal Career Path for them.
Internal Promotions and External Recruits (Target Ratios)
Having the right ratio of internal promotions and external recruits at different levels of the company is critical for growth and succession. Use these target ratios, rationale, and qualifiers to evaluate your Talent Value Stream (TVS).