I want to preface this post by pointing out that this is a major struggle of mine, so I am not pointing fingers here . This idea is definitely not new and is not even my idea, but I think it is worth talking about. See thing is that we are constantly told in the business world and in other areas of our lives that we should spend our valuable time trying to do a lot of different things, some of which are not even beneficial to us or anyone else for that matter. The problem with this strategy is that you will become an inch deep in a lot of things without actually doing any of them with excellence. If there is one thing that is an absolute pet peeve of mine, it is mediocrity. The ironic thing about this… I find myself being mediocre on a regular basis by trying to be an expert in too many areas or trying to be great a too many things. Go figure! I see a lot of companies and people trying to be all things to all people as well. They try to offer a million products or a million ideas hoping that one of them will stick.
After thinking about a few major players in the business world today, who are successful even in this turbulent economy we find ourselves in, I have noticed a certain marker to their success. This may not be the only marker but it is definitely a key one. The companies I want to mention here are: Google and Apple. You see, they focused on one idea or solution and excelled at it before they decided to attempt launching another product or service. I can almost guarantee you that they were not concerned with trying to do all things well, at first. They focused on their strengths first. For Google, they wanted to provide the worlds leading search engine… They succeeded! Now, they have a plethora of services and products that most would agree are exceptional. They built their business one product at a time. For Apple, it was building reliable computers… not necessarily cheap computers. They focused on providing a stable platform and uniform construction unlike their competitors, currently referred to as PC (we’ve all seen the commercials). While PC was opening up their platform to all who wanted to make parts or computers so they could make the cheapest and highest profit margin computers possible… Apple on the other hand told everyone that they could write software if they wanted but the computers would all be built with same parts on the inside and they gambled on the fact that quality not price would eventually lead to their success. They understood that developers could write and provide reliable and stable software for consumers because the software would be predictable in all machines built by Apple because the hardware was the same in each machine. The result was stability, and though they did not see as much revenue in the 1990’s as PC…who is taking it to the bank now? People everyday are making the switch to Apple/Mac because they have proven to everyone that their choice to focus on one thing at a time resulted in reliability. Not to mention they are genius’ at marketing. What this has done for the Apple brand is allow them to now offer an array of products that once again, considered by most to be exceptional.
Of course, there is always going to be the temptation to try to do too much no matter who you are! The biggest payoff to doing one thing at a time though, and doing it with excellence is that once that one thing is successful it allows you to then add one more service, idea, or product and give it the same time and attention you gave the first one. Who knows, when it is all said and done you may have many things that are successful as a result of tackling one thing at a time.
My challenge to us is this: Are we trying to do too much? Are we becoming an “a mile wide and an inch deep” as they say?
