Focusing on Tiny Things

Sometimes on LinkedIn you'll see "all the good stuff" from the CEO. An image of twelve people sitting inside a restaurant, glasses of wine from a 2009 Paso Cab, half-eaten ribeyes and chicken piccata with nineteen dollar roasted cauliflower sharable sides, and a quote saying "My team and I are recharging before a big day tomorrow with Acme Industries!" The post will be liked seventy-nine times, with eight comments from individuals with titles like "Strategic Thinker" saying "this is what true leadership looks like". 

Oh, LinkedIn! How cute.

Conversely, I once worked for a President who sat at the cubicle of my forecast analyst for several days to watch all of the details of how the hourly call center volume forecast was created. He'd asked questions like "don't you think the forecast of 1,137 calls at 10:00am on Wednesday is 5% too high?" My analyst would look at me, pleading for help.

That is an instance of focusing on a tiny thing.

Increasingly, I'm seeing focus on "tiny things".

And I get it ... you focus on tiny things because it's easier to deal with the subject line on an email campaign than it is to deal with the existential/structural issue of paying the same amount of money for 25% fewer new customers with increases in marketing costs coming seemingly forever. Easier to put the forecast analyst on blast mode about hourly order forecasts than to figure out how those orders will be generated in two years.

Some CEOs are focusing on bigger topics right now. They have to do that. Every employee needs them to do that. The brand they support won't exist if they don't do that.

Catalog CEOs ... don't let your paper/print/postage partners push you toward small topics that keep their cash register dinging (kids - there used to be things called cash registers - you can still see them at your local grocery store). You need to be looking to the future, and you know your future involves much less print than it requires today. Could you go to Washington, DC and lobby for lower postage costs? Sure. Have dinner, enjoy yourself. But you are focusing on a small thing. No amount of work on that front matters anymore. The very organization that supported you for nearly twenty years removed the word "catalog" from the name of their brand. That tells you all you need to know. They're reducing their focus on tiny things.