“The way we do things”
There are two pitfalls you can encounter in dealing with focus and process:
- In moments of weakness, you take on a project or client that's outside your focus zone. After all, you need the work.
- In moments of blindness, you fail to expand what you do, relying on the fading glory of yesterday instead of realizing that you are perfectly positioned to go forward.
In 1994, I ignored the web, defining our business as being email pioneers, not, more broadly, pioneering digital interactions. It took three years to catch up from that error.
On the other hand, we raced to do business with online services from Apple and Microsoft. Not because they were in our focus, but because we could.
The easiest way to see these errors is in hindsight, which does you no good at all.
The best way to avoid these two errors is to regularly decide (in a moment of quiet, not panic) what you do and where you do it. With intention.