A Focus Strategy For Your Team

The normal situation in your career as a team or organization leader is “We don’t have enough people/money/whatever to comfortably do everything we’d like to do, or are asked to do.”   

There will be plenty of times when you need to run on lean.  In fact, I encourage you to develop the ability to excel while running on lean resources.  You should be trimming unproductive fat from the program – that’s simply smart management.   The reason why a trained runner only needs the calories of a Wendy’s Triple burger to run a sub-3 hour marathon is that her body is highly efficient.  From the mitochondria up to organ systems and total cardiovascular capacity, every calorie of fuel is burned efficiently.   

I suggest you apply strategic allocation to the portfolio of your team’s work that turn into results which measurable help the organization.  This distribution is not at an individual level, but the overall team.  

70% of the total team effort needs to go to imperatives (must-do’s) and high ROI initiatives which you will happily feature in the end-of-year summary.   

20% of the total team effort should go to a rich mix of wins.  Include some work to develop new capabilities and streamline existing capability to improve productivity.  There is undoubtedly some run-maintain work that is necessary to avoid a future crisis.  Identify areas of growth and innovation, too, based on what you can anticipate about future organization needs.  Not all this needs to be visible to the world; there are plenty of high ROI projects which are foundational and enabling phases of work.  But nothing in this 20% should be embarrassing to discuss.  

10% of the total team effort should go into capability & capacity development.  New business and technical skills.  Improved people skills.  Investment in relationships with other groups.  Onboarding new hires.  Better documentation and cross-training.  

Why 70-20-10?  Every time I’ve seen a group let one of these 3 get too large, or too small, bad things began to happen.  This distribution isn’t magic, and still requires disciplined execution for success, but it’s a proven pattern you can replicate.  

At this point you’re probably saying, “But…” and I’m sure you’re half-right.  Only half.  Push your work into these three categories.  Check at least quarterly to see if the team is still on track. 

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