Focus – Memory Leak

I believe that focus is the single most important variable in the equation of execution. Yet, time and time again, I see executive teams unable to summon it. My theory is that true focus requires a level of strength and accountability resilience that most executives simply don’t have. It demands an “all or nothing” mentality—a trait most often found in founders and entrepreneurs, but rarely in established corporate structures.

It is the difference between movement and velocity. In physics, movement is scalar—it’s just speed. Velocity is a vector—it requires speed plus direction.

In my career leading product and engineering organizations, I have seen brilliant teams work incredibly hard, burning massive amounts of energy, only to achieve zero net displacement. Why? Because their vectors were misaligned. They were moving fast, but they weren’t moving forward.

The most idyllic example of this is the second coming of Steve Jobs at Apple in 1997.

The CEOs who preceded him—Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio—fell into the classic trap of trying to manage their way out of a crisis by adding more. They believed that capturing every niche meant building a specific product for every niche. They lacked the strength to say “no,” so they said “yes” to everything. The result was a confused portfolio of Performa, Quadra, and PowerBook models that baffled customers. They were chasing revenue, but by fracturing their focus, they were destroying value.

When Jobs returned, he saw that Apple wasn’t suffering from a lack of talent. It was suffering from a surplus of “good” ideas. The product roadmap was a mess of printers, servers, and slightly varied Macintoshes. Jobs didn’t ask the teams to double their output. He walked to a whiteboard, drew a simple 2×2 grid (Consumer/Pro, Desktop/Portable), and wiped the rest of the table clean.

He deleted 70% of the roadmap. He understood that to make the iMac great, he had to let the Newton die.

This is the hardest lesson for leaders to learn: Focus isn’t about concentration; it’s about subtraction.

I like to think of this in terms of physics.

The Equation: Pressure = Force / Area

In engineering, pressure is determined by dividing force by the surface area (P = F/A).

If you apply your force over a large area, you create very little pressure. You are essentially leaning against the wall.
If you apply that same force to the tip of a needle, you can punch through steel.

Most of us—and most companies—operate like a flat palm pushing against a wall. We spread our limited bandwidth across a dozen priorities, creating zero penetration. We mistake “busy” for “impact.”

The Entropy of Success: Why Focus is So Difficult

If the physics are so clear—reduce the surface area to increase pressure—why is it so rare to find a truly focused organization?

In my experience, five forces conspire against focus:

Too Much Opportunity: Paradoxically, opportunity is the biggest threat to execution. When you have resources and options, the temptation to chase every rabbit is overwhelming.
Lack of Constraints: Innovation thrives on constraints. When there are no hard limits—whether imposed by the market or self-imposed by leadership—strategies bloat.
Lack of Discipline: As I mentioned, focus is an “all or nothing” game. It requires a level of behavioral discipline that is uncomfortable for most.
The “General Manager” Problem: You cannot make surgical cuts if you don’t understand the anatomy. We have too many general managers who lack the detailed, functional understanding of their business. They can’t decide what to cut because they don’t truly understand how the engine works so they hedge their bets.
Old School Executive Thinking: There is a pervasive belief that an executive’s job is to ask for more—more features, more markets, more growth. I fundamentally disagree. I believe an executive’s primary job is to ask for less. Less confusion. Less drag. Less surface area.

Here is a framework for how to apply this “reduction of surface area” from the boardroom down to your calendar.

1. Macro Focus: The Corporate Strategy

The Principle: Strategic Abandonment

In a company, the enemy of focus isn’t the bad idea. Bad ideas are typically self-correcting because the data screams “stop.”

The real enemy is the “good” idea. The project that is profitable enough. The feature that customers like somewhat. These are the “Zombie Projects.” They are dangerous because they consume engineering cycles, marketing budget, and leadership headspace, yet they prevent you from putting sufficient pressure on the one or two initiatives that actually drive the business.

This is Strategic Drag. Every “good” project you keep alive slows down the velocity of your “great” projects.

The Framework: Adopt a “Hell Yeah or No” policy. If a new initiative is just “reasonable,” kill it. “Reasonable” is the enemy of “Exceptional.” If you have ten priorities, you actually have zero. You need the courage to starve the profitable “good” to feed the potential “great.”

2. Operational Focus: The Digital Rebirth

The Principle: Subtraction Before Digitization

This physics equation applies just as ruthlessly to how a company operates. Most legacy corporations are clogged with “process sediment”—layers of analog habits, manual workarounds, and spreadsheet safety nets that have accumulated over decades.

When these companies try to modernize, they often fail because they try to add digital workflows on top of analog mindsets. They implement the new ERP system but keep the manual approval chain “just in case.” They build the data lake but keep the Excel trackers. This splits the organization’s focus between the past and the future.

The Framework: You cannot iterate your way from a horse to a car; you have to abandon the horse. For a process to be truly digitized, the analog version must be stopped, not just deprecated.

Burn the Boats: If you are digitizing an operation, you must remove the ability to revert to the manual way.
The Rebirth: Treat operations like products. Don’t just pave the cow path. Wipe the table clean (just like Jobs did) and ask, “If we started this company today with zero history, how would this workflow exist?” Build that, and delete the rest.

3. Meso Focus: Career & Ambition

The Principle: The Competence Trap

As we grow in our careers, we accumulate skills. We become capable of doing many things well. This leads to the Competence Trap: Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

There is a mental model often attributed to Warren Buffett regarding this. He purportedly asked his pilot to list his top 25 goals, then circle the top 5. The pilot assumed he should work on the top 5 and do the other 20 in his spare time.

Buffett corrected him: The bottom 20 are the Avoid-At-All-Costs list. They are the things you care about just enough to distract you from the few things that matter.

The Framework: Audit your commitments. Identify the things you are doing simply because you are capable of doing them, not because they drive your long-term value. If it’s not in your top 5, it is a distraction. Cut it loose.

4. Micro Focus: The Daily Task

The Principle: The Context Switching Penalty

This is where the battle is won or lost on a Tuesday morning.

We live in an economy designed to fracture our attention. We deceive ourselves into thinking we can multitask, but the science says otherwise. Researchers call it “Attention Residue.” When you switch from a strategic document to check an email, a significant portion of your CPU (your brain) remains allocated to the email even after you switch back.

This is latency. If you switch contexts every 15 minutes, you are effectively operating with a fraction of your IQ. You are introducing lag into your own processing power.

The Framework: You cannot rely on willpower; you must rely on systems.

Defensive Design: Remove the option to be distracted. Physical separation from the phone. Turn off notifications.
The Deep Work Block: Schedule a 4-hour block for your hardest task. Treat it like a flight—you are buckled in, the door is closed, and there is no WiFi. This is how you generate density.