“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do” – John Carmack.
If there is one area of judgement that is going to be critical for leadership, it is where to focus their time on at any given point in time. With that, it means automatically means to consciously decide what to de-prioritize from a focus perspective. Of course it doesn’t mean that nobody will work on it, it simply means that the leadership’s attention will be on other matters.
Areas were leaders have to be mindful about where to focus on:
- processes to be followed
- issues & risks which have been identified
- internal escalations (within team or internal stakeholders)
Good leaders make it clear to their environment where their focus is on.
Items which always require prioritization from leadership (and could mean that other prioritized items need to get dropped):
- milestones committed to Customer
- deliverables committed to Customer
- escalations/complaints from Customer