“Always start at the end before you begin.” — Robert Kiyosaki
Scaling isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing less—but with purpose. Winning in a competitive market demands ruthless focus on a few critical objectives that make you #1 in an attractive niche.
The challenge? Staying focused. Founders face relentless distractions: shiny new opportunities, urgent operational fires, and the never-ending “Whirlwind” of daily demands. Without focus, efforts scatter, execution suffers, and goals slip out of reach. Sound familiar?
History offers a dramatic lesson on the power of focus. In 1911, two expedition teams raced to be the first to reach the South Pole. Only one team succeeded. Amundsen’s Norwegian team kept laser focus on their mission: reach the Pole and return alive. Scott’s British team, by contrast, diluted their efforts by adding scientific research to an already daunting goal. They never made it home. It turned out focus was a matter of life and death.
Scaling your business is no less high-stakes. Focus is not optional—it’s the difference between winning and losing. The good news? Like Amundsen, you can achieve extraordinary success by mastering the art of ruthless focus. Here’s how.
💡 Think Like a Laser
Imagine your team’s energy as water. A wide shower head provides a gentle stream, but channel that same water into a high-pressure jet, and it can cut through steel. That’s the power of focus.
As a leader, you’re the focusing mechanism for your team’s energy. If you spread their efforts across too many priorities, their efforts will be diluted and results will be weak. But if you concentrate their energy on a small number of critical outcomes, you’ll see breakthrough results.
The key is: decide on the outcomes worth 10X the other outcomes, and focus on those.
So how do you know what to focus on?
🎯 Your Gameplan: the object of your focus
You achieving extreme focus by defining a winning Gameplan. Think of it as the North Star that guides your team to navigate the turbulent waters of business. A Gameplan combines three essential elements:
1. Winning Moves:
These are the top 2–3 strategic initiatives to capitalise on your valuable opportunities and change the game for your business over the next three years. They should:
- Exploit market trends.
- Change the game for your business (e.g., launching a market-first product).
- Align with your competitive strategy.
- Be unique and achievable within 2–3 years.
2. Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)
Your BHAG is a singular, measurable goal that inspires your team and sets a clear end state over the next 3 years. Achieving your BHAG should:
- Be game-changing
- Directly address your biggest constraint.
- Have a clear start line, finish line, and deadline.
- Be simple and inspiring for your team (e.g., “Land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth”).
3. Execution Blueprint
This is your plan to achieve the BHAG, broken into measurable Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) across key areas: financial, customer, product, operations, and people. Each WIG must be clear, specific, and owned by a leader.
Download the Execution Blueprint template by signing up to Art of Scale’s 30 day FREE trial.
🚫 Leadership Discipline: Saying “No”
To scale you need extreme focus, and extreme focus requires discipline:
- Say “no” to distractions, even tempting ones.
- Say “not yet” to opportunities that aren’t aligned with your gameplan.
- Keep your team locked onto the Execution Blueprint.
Scaling isn’t about doing more—it’s about working together to achieve a small number of critical objectives that make you #1 in an attractive market niche. That’s how you cut through steel.
💬 Key Takeaways
- To scale, focus on the small number of outcomes that truly matter. Extreme focus transforms effort into breakthrough results.
- Achieve extreme focus by defining your 3-year Gameplan, including: Winning Moves, BHAG, and Execution Blueprint—and say “no” to everything else.
Ready to put Discipline #1 into action? In our next blog, we’ll cover Discipline #2: Align Your Team with Clear Structure and Goals.
For tools, examples, and templates to build your Winning Gameplan, visit ArtofScale.io [Tools].
Ready to Master Execution? For a deeper dive into the 7 Disciplines of Execution and the tools to implement them, check out the Art of Scale book. Unlock strategies and tools to transform your business into a scaling powerhouse.