Focus

A week ago I met a long time friend of mine. We talked about my current business. I already sold him two of my previous companies. Sort of. But each time he was the driver and influenced the decision to buy. And we talked a lot. Because a lot has been happening in my current business. By the way I am no longer allowed to call my startup a startup - one of our angel investors wants to present us to the world as a mature company. Which we really are - I've added it up recently: 64 men-years of R&D. That is a lot! But a kid will always be a kid to her father. No matter how old they both are...

Anyway. I was describing the landscape of the Internet of Things and low power connectivity and software stacks from tiny wireless processors that live their lives harvesting energy from light (photovoltaic), temperature differences (Peltier) or motion (tiny dynamos) to widely scalable servers in the Cloud. Then I described the myriads of applications we can define on our platform. Applications, that used to be separate, vertically integrated systems. Like activity monitoring of seniors living on their own, property supervision, and - of course - home automation with ambient intelligence.

He was listening carefully and then concluded: "Amazing, you can do anything, indeed. But that is not good. Just pick one thing. And focus."

I absolutely do agree. Focus is crucial. And the lack of it can be lethal.

One of the memories from driving a fast (and I do mean fast) car on a racetrack, I have, is this. There are seven gears. And when I accelerate, with every gear shift my field of view narrows. It is somehow automatic. When standing still, my FOV is about 180 degrees. Then the car starts moving on the first gear and the FOV narrows a little, probably to 160 degrees. then with every gear change it becomes less. 140-120-100-80-40-20. The car almost flies. The only way to stay put is to focus on the road. Only glancing the revs. Everything else becomes irrelevant and is potentially disturbing.

The same is in business. When the engine is roaring and everything around flies focus on the road and execution is the most important. Like in a starting plane, watch the instruments and don't blink looking ahead. There was time for that when the aircraft was docked at the terminal. It was the time to plan the route, select the landing options, calculate fuel etc. But when on a runway, focus on the take off.

Which on a daily basis can be difficult, because "we can also do this" or "we should be doing that too" is often too tempting. Resist! Focusing always pays off.