Lead In 30 Podcast

Organizations Need Leaders Who Narrow The Focus

• Russ Hill

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Trying to improve in too many areas simultaneously is the fastest path to nowhere. In this thought-provoking episode, Russ Hill tackles the widespread problem of focus dilution that plagues both organizations and individuals.

Drawing from his extensive experience coaching executive teams at major companies, Russ reveals how well-intentioned HR departments and leaders often sabotage progress by overwhelming their teams with too many priorities, resources, and development initiatives. He vividly describes the "whack-a-mole" approach that leaves people paralyzed by good intentions rather than empowered to make meaningful improvements.

Through personal anecdotes and organizational examples, Russ demonstrates how narrowing your focus to just 2-3 priorities creates the conditions for actual movement. Whether it's in your personal development journey (where trying to improve your fitness, relationships, spiritual life, and professional skills simultaneously leads nowhere) or in your leadership approach (where bombarding your team with constant new initiatives prevents any from taking root), the principle remains the same: less truly is more.

The episode offers a refreshing counterpoint to our culture's tendency toward information overload. Russ shares how a former boss challenged his habit of constantly reading new leadership books, suggesting instead that he read one book multiple times and fully implement its insights. This approach—studying fewer resources more deeply—creates sustainable change in a way that constant consumption never can.

Ready to break free from the paralysis of too many priorities? Listen now to discover how focusing on less can help you and your organization achieve more. Share this episode with colleagues who might be struggling with initiative overload in their organizations, and start creating real movement today by narrowing your focus.

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About the podcast:
The Lead In 30 Podcast with Russ Hill is for leaders of teams who want to grow and accelerate their results. In each episode, Russ Hill shares what he's learned consulting executives. Subscribe to get two new episodes every week. To connect with Russ message him on LinkedIn!



Speaker 1:

Stop trying to be exceptional in every area. The fastest path to nowhere is picking multiple destinations. You want to be great. You want to get real movement. You got to narrow your focus.

Speaker 2:

This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill.

Speaker 1:

You cannot be serious.

Speaker 2:

Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes Lead through 30.

Speaker 3:

Lead through change. Choose to be powerful. Make decisions faster and with buy-in. Check out the new 30-day leadership courses now available from Lone Rock Leadership. You can watch the preview videos right now at lonerockio.

Speaker 1:

They are the four areas that every organization struggles with. They are the four areas that every organization struggles with. I promise you that your company, your team, is having challenges in one of these four areas, and we've got those courses available off the shelf for you at LoneRockio. Welcome in to the Lead in 30 podcast. My name is Russ Hill. In less than 30 minutes, we give you an idea of framework, an example of best practice, something to consider implementing in the way that you lead others. I make my living coaching, consulting senior executive teams at some of the world's biggest and most amazing companies, and in this little corner of the online universe is where I get to share what our team is, uh, is learning Again. You can find out more about our executive team consulting work or our off the shelf 30 day cohort leadership training. You can get people in HR LND certified in it at lone rockio. Okay, so this is.

Speaker 1:

This is a recurring problem that I want to talk about in the episode with you today, and we all struggle with it. Some of our organization well, that's not true. All of our organizations struggle with it, and we as individuals, at a personal level, in our attempt to grow, to succeed, to learn to improve. This is one of those gravitational forces out there that we have to combat. And what is it? It's this whack-a-mole, this, everything focusing on everything. Let me give you an example. So some organizations that we work with, either in the leadership training space, they're buying licenses for our content and utilizing our courses with their mid-level managers Maybe they've got hundreds, or maybe they've got thousands of those managers. They're implementing solutions, or maybe they're using us on the executive consulting side, and so we're on site every quarter with the executive team.

Speaker 1:

And what happens so often, especially and I don't mean to pinpoint any particular department, because we all struggle with this, but in HR and L&D, learning and development, and in human resources or the people side of the business, we I it's good intentions that drive this problem, but it is a problem, and and, and what often happens is we want to be this resource. So hr, or maybe an executive even, and outside of hr or lnd, they want to be a resource. They want to help their team develop, to get better, to be more effective, and so they're constantly on the prowl, searching for, looking for, shopping for anything that might improve them. Or they have a habit of reading books, they love to read, and so they're out there in. Whatever the latest leadership book is or the latest article, is that that that somebody posts in their feed on linkedin, they share it with everybody, or they, they, they bring it up in a meeting. And so what happens? And and again, it's good intentions that are driving this, like we're oh, here's a good idea I saw, or here's something that um would be useful, or oh, my gosh, this is a, this is a great, an important area for leaders to get better at, or organizations to fix or deal with. And so this executive or this HR team or this L&D department thinks, well, we're trying to be a great resource, and so they're funneling things out, sending out emails, posting it to Slack, putting it in teams, putting uh, offering trainings, um, making resource kits, uh, handing out books or doing book clubs or whatever it might, forwarding articles, posting this or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1:

What? What ends up happening is none of it sticks. It's absolutely the recipe, the exact formula that you would want to pick if you don't want any movement, and so you have to. And the way this happens at a personal level is we see all these things either in our social media feeds or in our shopping, or in the articles we read, or in the in the conferences we go to. And I remember one conference I went to in Orlando a few years ago and you know they've got there were probably 5,000 people there and I loved the conference, but every session so like every hour, maybe, maybe every 45 minutes, maybe whatever it was they'd have somebody else on stage, somebody else on stage, somebody else on stage, constant, constant, constant sort of things. And I would think, oh my gosh, that is so good, oh my goodness, that was so good, oh that's good, oh this, and, and guess what? You leave and you're fully entertained, your mind has been stimulated, you're thinking, you're, you're full of good ideas, and how much of it do you implement in your own personal life or in your organization? None of it. None of it. Why? Because it's overload, it's too many things.

Speaker 1:

We talk about this a lot you've heard me talk about this theme because it's core of every, all of our work around clarity right and taking the complex and making it simple. So we focus with organizations and executives and leaders on this, from the, from the execution standpoint of um, expect of deliverables. So you yeah, we're tracking 80 things, but you need to really prioritize three or four and let the organization know these are the three or four most important objectives and metrics, or categories and metrics, right, um, I'm not talking about that today. In this episode, the same principle applies, but I'm not talking about it from the from a key results or a tkr, a team key result standpoint that we really work on. That's one of the major outcomes of lead in 30, that that 30-day cohort experience is. Leaders leave the mid-level manager leaves with clarity around.

Speaker 1:

Well, what do I need? What do I need to go to my team with in order to get them to focus and prioritize on the right things, to where we can actually hit some of these TKRs, some of these outcomes or KPIs, whatever you want to call it for the year, and so that's really effective. But the same is true in development. And so let me just get super personal and then we'll come back and apply it from the team standpoint or the organization standpoint, because so many of your organizations they struggle with this and it's so painful to watch because you're actually wasting so much money, you're wasting so much time. It's it's you're not actually helping the organization move forward. You're wasting so much time. It's. It's you're not actually helping the organization move forward, you're actually holding us where we're at, you're disabling movement, and so I'll get back to the team and organization level in a moment.

Speaker 1:

But so in your personal life, there's so many ways you want to improve, aren't there, like? You want to be healthier, you want to be more in shape, you want to work on your diet, you want to work on how much you exercise or how active you are, whether that's, you know, a strength training, or whether that's getting ready for a race, or whether that's just going for a walk once a day or once every two days, or, you know, some of you are super aggressive in that, in those, in those goals, and some of you just have kind of minor ones. And so, but we want to, we want to be, we want to eat better, we want to be more active, more in shape. You also want to read more, probably, right, like you probably have this desire to, I want to read more and focus on certain things and take more courses or buy, you know, buy more books, or finish more books. Um, then you probably have something around spirit, you know the spiritual goal being a better person, or maybe it's more around your values or meditation or who knows.

Speaker 1:

However you categorize that in your particular life. You've got some goal around that. And then you've got relationship goals with either a spouse or a partner or family members, a kid, a sibling or whatever it might be. Then you want to do more, like in the neighborhood, like you want to get to know your neighbors more and you want to, you know, maybe put on a function and when the weather is nice and you're having a little street barbecue or whatever like that would be nice. Or you want to help that lady down the street or that family that you haven't gotten to know, that moved in six months ago and you've been meaning to get over to them. And then you want to. You want to be more present at your kid's school or with their, your in-laws. You know your son-in-law or daughter-in-law or whatever it might be, your in-laws. You know your son-in-law or daughter-in-law or whatever it might be. Then you want to like take a course or go back to school and get that degree or finish that certification or do that, and while you want to be better at your a chef right At cooking and all of that, like you get the point right you want to organize the garage, you want to get the basement, whatever you? You've got this list of like all of these things.

Speaker 1:

It's actually one of my pet peeves about religion and I'm a very religious, spiritual person, and the church that I am a part of and that I've attended my whole life is getting much better at this. You know they're a global entity with millions of people and whatever else, and so you have this leadership structure, uh, of the churches, like anyone and um, and, and you know so they've got projects and priorities and programs and initiatives and whatever else, and so you can go to church on a given Sunday or whatever, read some of the content they got apps right and different things or listen to a talk, and it's, it's, it's. It can quickly become too much like I need to do that and I need to be better at this and I need to improve in that way. And oh, as a family, we're not doing this and as an individual, I'm not doing that. And in order to be a good christian or follower of christ or whatever it is, whatever religion or maybe you're not even really, you get the point, like all of these things, and then what ends up happening is you're just overloaded, like it's too much, too much, and so what do you end up doing? You bring so much value to the individual that you're not helping them in any measurable way, and so you've got to strip all that away, as much of it as you possibly can, and just pick a few key areas, the areas we want you to really focus on, or that where we're trying to bring value to you is this area. I give you another example in that space and then I'll move off of it. So when I, um, when I've been asked to serve in different positions of leadership in, uh, because our, our, the church I'm a part of and again I'm going to get off the church example in a minute just think of it as organization, because I'm not really getting into the religion side of it. Just this is an example because I've got firsthand experience in it, um, on the personal level. Then we'll go back to companies and teams in a minute. But so I you know I'd be I'll be asked.

Speaker 1:

There was a period of time where, for four years, where I was asked to serve over this area of our church and you know thousands of people that were, that, that were members of our church in this area and and so we would do these conferences and um, these meetings, and, and it's standard policy that you would get everyone in the area to gather three times a year and you would have multiple meetings, two to three times, kind of varied. And you would have a Saturday kind of leadership session for two hours, and then you would have a Saturday night where just the adult members of the church would come, and then Sunday morning you'd have like a session with the youth and all the teenagers would come for an hour or two, and then you'd have another session with all the families. Everybody would come to that, and each of these meetings is two hours and then, and so you and you ask people to speak at them. And so for the leadership meeting on Saturday, you've got six speakers, and then for the Saturday night session, you've got eight speakers, and then for the Sunday morning, you've got two or three speakers. And then for the general, and what happens is the person sitting in the pew or in the chair? They're overloaded. You've given them 27 topics on everything, from just everything under the sun. So what do you actually want them to do?

Speaker 1:

So I was a huge advocate and I'm like I'm so low on the food chain, on the org chart, so to speak right that I can't make any difference. But I kept advocating for can we not do two hours? Can we do like? Where does it say in the rules that we have to do a two hour meeting and have eight speakers? Can't we do one hour? And and just have three speakers? And can't the topics all be connected? And it's just this one thing, and and let's just give some different ways to look at that topic and and let's leave them wanting more and and and let's focus on what we're, what we're asking them to do. And I, I, I got, I made some progress in that we got the meetings down to, in some instances, an hour and a half, but I just you know, it was standard kind of I couldn't find it written anywhere, but it just seemed to be cultural that these meetings needed to be two hours and and then people just stop coming, a lot of people don't show up because it's overload, and and yet we're doing that in our organizations.

Speaker 1:

And so I had a, I had a leader that I worked for years ago and I, um, I would constantly tell him uh, when I first started working with him. I reported into him and, uh, I would tell him I read this book on this and that's amazing to be some leadership book, right. Like this, back in the days when you go to Barnes and Noble or Borders or whatever the bookstores, the physical bookstores were, and so I would love to go, like on a Saturday morning or Friday night or whatever, on my way home from work I'd stop by the bookstore, just walk around, look at the shiny you know objects. The different titles be like, oh, this is a really good book on this. Or wow, this person who ran that company wrote a book on how he or she did this and I'm gonna buy that one.

Speaker 1:

So I'd come home with three or four because I couldn't pick just one, right, because they all look so interesting, and I'd read one and I'd talk to my boss about it and I would say, hey, this book is just so amazing and this book and whatever. And he's like do you ever consider this? What he said to me, it's like do you ever consider reading less? Or going back to the same book, like that's the only book that you're going to study for the next three months and you're going to read it four or five times and you're going to really pick out some things to implement in your life. And I it was kind of a, it was kind of a downer to me when he brought it up to me. I'm like, oh, I really think this is like a strength of mine that I'm reading all of these things. But he was absolutely right. And so there are a few books that I have listened to. So I implemented that change and I still would come home from with four books, but I would, I would, I the the.

Speaker 1:

The pivot I made was I'm going to read the book three or four times. And now in today's day and age, what I do is I go back and I listen to the audio book, or I'm not doing yard work or I'm doing whatever, and I'll go back and I'll listen to chapter four, I'll listen to chapter seven, or I want to implement this particular thing, or I'll find a podcast episode where that author was a guest on a certain show and he or she is going deeper on this thing, she's going deeper on this thing, and so they're reinforcing in my mind as I'm listening to that podcast interview, or I'm watching that YouTube video, or I'm watching that person on stage deliver a keynote around that book. It's reinforcing those ideas. So the takeaway is in so many of our organizations we've got to dial it back. We've got to pick fewer leadership competencies. Like you're giving me stuff on how to be inclusive, how to build trust, how to do this, how to be a better coach, how to listen to feedback more, how to do that, like it just constantly we, we just work with so many of these HR and L and D teams that are making these beautiful resources, pamphlets and brochures and then you, they're reinforcing pillars and priorities and um vision and projects and we're sending all of these beautiful resources out to the leaders across the organization and nobody knows which one's important, which one we're actually doing.

Speaker 1:

They can't do it all. You want to be paralyzed. You want to be. You want to be just have no motion. You want to just get stuck by an overwhelm. Tell me to work on 80 different things. I don't know what it is that you think is actually important, because you can't possibly think all of this is important. You can't possibly think we're going to do all these things, and so in our personal lives we pick just a few things.

Speaker 1:

You know what this month, I'm actually just going to focus on the basement. You know what? This month, I'm actually going to take a course and I'm going to work on the basement. You know what this month I'm actually going to? I'm going to take a course and I'm going to work on becoming a better cook, a chef, baker, whatever it is. That's what I'm digging into, and it can only be two or three things at once. It cannot be 15.

Speaker 1:

I see this everywhere in my life People who have so many good intentions, so many great desires, they're reading so much, they're listening to so much. They've got this task list of 80 million great things, and then you know what? They get home and they're tired and they the list is overwhelming, and so they do none of it, literally none of it. And the exact same thing is true in organizations. We send out all of this content, we get people all of these resources. What are they executing on none of it. We've got no measurable movement. And so I hate to say it, but it's the reality. All of the energy you're spending building those resources is actually wasted wasted. It's a disservice, it's not a good thing, it's not a strength of your organization. Sending out a book or an article to the team every week or every few days, that you're actually doing them a disservice.

Speaker 1:

So pick a few. It's these three core competencies, it's these two core skills, it's this area. We're going to get really good at giving and receiving feedback as a leadership team, like we're going to finally make some progress in this area. That's the focus for the next three, six months and we're going to we're going to lay out how to do that and how we're going to hold people accountable, or it's we're going to finally get focused and prioritizing on the right things, the things that really move the needle for our organization. So we're going to teach our managers how to do that, and so we're just going to do that when leaders do this. This is why we've had such good luck with Clarity Al. It's been so powerful.

Speaker 1:

Why it's so sticky is because when these executives of organizations, whether they have a thousand employees or a hundred thousand employees, when the executive or executive team comes out and says these are the three most important things, guess what happens? Movement. There's actual, detectable, measurable progress towards something because we narrow the focus. And the same is true in our desire to improve, to be more effective, to grow, to strengthen our ability. So, in your own life, narrow the focus. What are the two or three things that's it Cause you're not going to do the 10. It's not going to happen. Can you just finally look at your life over the last three, four, five, 20 years and say, yep, whenever I've had all this big list, not much has gotten done, or it's random things that I check off the list. So you're going to narrow the focus of where you want to improve and get better and you're going to do the same thing. What I would suggest, what I'm advocating, is you do the exact same thing for your team, for your organization less noise.

Speaker 1:

Take the complex, make it simple. It's only these few things. That's what we're focusing on. It's only these few things. That's what we're focusing on. When you narrow the focus, you actually get movement. When you narrow the focus, you actually see progress. When you narrow the focus, you feel more energized because it's doable, it's attainable, you see the path. When you've got 10 destinations, you don't even get up off the couch because I don't know where to go first and look at all the moving and driving and work that's needed to get to those 10 destinations. So pick one, pick three, pick two. Narrow the focus. That's what I'm advocating in this episode of the Lead in 30 podcast.

Speaker 2:

Share this episode with a colleague, your team or a friend. Tap on the share button and text the link. Thanks for listening to the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill.