Keep Your Focus

It's tempting to focus on your process.

Business books and business leaders spend a lot of time addressing the need for process improvement. And of course, that's because the process IS important, contributing to the quality of your final output and affecting the costs you incur as you produce it.

While you're improving your process, though, you need to remember why you're doing it. It's easy to get caught up in improvement for the sake of improvement and lose your focus on your ultimate result. As you work to improve your business practices or your organizational structure, be sure there's a reason for doing so, and make sure what you're doing contributes to that reason.

Consider the example of Best Buy and the Geek Squad. Best Buy bought Geek Squad, a small computer customer support company, and integrated it into their corporate structure. Geek Squad is huge now, you'll find them in Best Buys everywhere. Much is made of the Squad's style of dress and their lingo, and they're known for their innovative management methods, such as communicating between stores through online games. The Squad is a cool bunch of geeks and their customer satisfaction ratings are through the roof, all of which is good for Best Buy.

The Best Buy/Geek Squad integration is touted as a case of a company incorporating unique processes, breaking through corporate bureaucracy to take a new approach. But try this: go into a Best Buy store and find a retail associate who can help you decide which router is right for you, or which printer you should buy. How does that work out for you? If your luck is anything like mine you'll find someone who can tell you where they are but can't give any advice on which is best for your needs. I'm sure there are some very knowledgeable sales associates working at Best Buy, but overall, the innovation found in the Geek Squad hasn't translated into better performance by the retail staff. And retail, of course, is their main focus.

Now, it could be that Best Buy wants to shift their focus from retail to service, and if so, then Geek Squad can lead the way. But they're still building big new stores, and I don't see any sign they are planning to move from sales of electronics to servicing electronics as their primary moneymaker.

Though this example addresses customer service, that doesn't mean it's not applicable to you in your creative field. Whether your mission is to produce hairstyles, video games, or advertising, you need to stay focused on it. If you want to change your mission then change it, but don't say you're moving in one direction while making changes more suited to another. This isn't to say you shouldn't make improvements in areas beyond your primary mission -- Best Buy's purchase of Geek Squad has improved the company's reputation, which can help increase sales -- but you should do that in addition to, not in place of, your main area of focus.