Focus remains one of the biggest challenges for a business owner. Finding tools that can help us get focused on the right things at the right time offers invaluable help as we navigate the dynamic twists and turns our businesses take.

A simple concept, the Three Gates of Focus, offers business owners a tool that can help them clarify issues, uncover the root cause of those issues and provide solutions that better address the problem.

Where there is confusion about the cause, there is confusion about the solution.

All issues can be put under one of these three gates of focus:

The People Gate

The Process Gate

The Profit Gate

The ability of a CEO to narrow their focus when dealing with the myriad of problems and challenges they face daily provides clarity and can lead to better decisions.

For instance, a lack of sales could quickly be laid in the lap of the sales team. By being willing to ask the question: Is this a People Issue, a Process Issue or a Profit Issue and generate discussion with key employees, a leader will more likely find the root cause of the problem and find a longer term solution.

By further asking, in the case of a lackluster pipeline:  Is this a resource issue — have we put enough financial resources into this area; Is this a training issue — have we provided exceptional training opportunities; Is this a problem with work flow — do we have proof that the process works, a better idea of how to solve the problem pops up quicker and with greater clarity.

Every single problem, issue or concern that a company faces can be put into one of the Three Gates of Focus. And just starting from the beginning to ignite the focus of a team on the right Gate can save time, money and headaches.

Here’s what it means to Focus on the People Gate
You are focused on building competency, staff satisfaction, performance and innovation through the conscious development of people. Areas of focus include, but aren’t limited to:

Effective hiring practices
On-going and consistent training
Competitive benefits
High voltage
Development of a vision and core values
Performance indicators
Intentional decision making

What it means to Focus on The Process Gate
You are focused on transforming complexity into clarity through systems. Examples of those systems include:

Sales systems
Marketing systems
Financial systems
Customer service systems
Operational systems
People management systems
Risk management systems

What it means to Focus on the Profit/Revenue Gate
A company is focused on predicting growth by maximizing and anticipating profit/revenue protection and capacity issues. Examples include but aren’t limited to:

Sales capacity
Facilities capacity
Fulfillment capacity
Production capacity
Product development capacity

There is an advantage in explaining to your company what each Gate of Focus represents.  There is an advantage in using the language of growth to identify issues under one of these three gates. The ability to uncover the root cause of a problem leads to quicker resolution of those problems. And a company with fewer problems will always keep that company ahead of the competition.

As a business growth specialist, I strive to bring the best and
most effective information to my clients. If you’ve been in this
amazing field of business consultancy for very long, you know
our clients don’t always take our input. Rightly so. It’s their
business and they have every right to choose which path they
want to traverse.

2009 was a tough year. And I believe it created an atmosphere
of delivery that will force all of us to rethink our businesses,
our services and how to best help our clients come out of a very
difficult time.

Was reading some information on the teachings from Anthony De
Mello who was born in India in 1931 and passed away at the young
age of 56. De Mello’s rants were about ‘waking us up’ and his beliefs
were that increasing our awareness would increase our ability
to stop ’sleepwalking’ through life, to truly ‘know thyself’.

I realized that in certain situations, I was ’sleepwalking’ through
engagements with clients. I always delivered more than expected and
clients seemed satisfied. However this article mentioned how
difficult it really is to live in awareness and in fact, people in
‘unawareness’ are not conscious of their actions or their words.

Whew. How many times did I leave a presentation or a workshop and
as I was walking back to my hotel room or to my car have a moment
of thinking ‘what exactly did I say’?

Ed Bassett, senior vice president at DuPont is quoted as saying:

‘The secret of leading in a rapidly changing environment is to be
committed to living the examined life; oneself.’ And the great
Confucius said, ‘The one who would be constant in happiness must
frequently change.’

There is a strong lesson here that I am going to take away and it’s
simply this:

– I will not just ask my clients to recognize change in themselves,
I will strive to increase my own awareness of everything around me.

– I will listen even more intently to my clients but I will also
listen intently to myself in order that I may hear those clients
more completely.

As Stephen Covey writes: “Between stimulus and response, there is a
space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our
response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”

I’m going to learn how to put that gap into my conversations, my
actions in order to improve my life which in turn will improve the
lives of people I strive to help.

Without going into too much detail, my older sister and her husband moved to Durango last year after spending over 20 years in sunny, warm California.

They moved because their daughter and her husband become business owners for the first time, buying a business in Durango. There are grandkids involved so hence the complete desertion of the California lifestyle.

As kids growing up in Fort Collins, CO, we were hitting the ski slopes at a very young age. Throughout my teen years I skied quite a bit but never considered myself a great skier. Then in my late 30s and early 40s I took it up again with a determination to excel at a sport I had been very tentative about. I took lessons at Vail, CO and was soon skiing down black diamonds and skiing moguls — something I never thought I would or could do.

I got the call last December, just before Christmas. My sister had signed up for ski lessons at Durango Mountain (what us locals still refer to as Purgatory). Really, I said with a bit of hesitation. Since she had never been a serious skier I gave her all the caution about being careful, you’re too old to be breaking any bones, I joked.

It was after I hung up the phone that the thought first entered my brain. If she can do this, so can I! I didn’t think that much about it until the first of February. I called and said I’d be there on a Wednesday in February and I’d attend her morning lesson, then we’d ski together the rest of the day.

As I drove from Sante Fe, NM to Durango, I remember thinking that it had been 10 years since I had last stepped into a pair of skis and hit the slopes. Nervous energy surged as I thought about that first run which I knew would be down a very gentle slope — but still, I was not at all in the same shape I was in when I was tackling those Black Diamonds.

On the chair lift, I joked with my sister and my niece about taking it slow. Getting off the chair proved harder than I remember and I didn’t appreciate it hitting me as I stuggled to get out of its way. My thought was: go easy, keep your weight forward, stay in control.

It only took me about 10 minutes of taking it easy that I knew that plan would get me hurt. I started becoming very intentional about what I was doing. I knew what to do. I had always known what to do. And as soon as I started skiing with intention, I started skiing. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I schussed down that first hill. Poling, gliding and turning as I attacked that bunny slope with confidence and wonder.

There was a lesson in this, I thought as I rode the chair back up for a run at a Blue. As business owners we sometimes lose our confidence. We sometimes forget what we know and we allow self doubt and fear to affect our ability to make decisions. We may have ‘been off the slopes’ for awhile because sales were down, a client went away, we lose good people, we have to start over. Those are the times when it will do us no good to be tentative.

We have to attack our businesses with intention every day so we don’t lose our edge. We have to believe we know what to do and then go do it. I didn’t do any Black Diamonds that day on the slopes but I’m confident I will. After all, Green, Blue or Black, the difference is the slope and with the right gear and the right technique, anything is possible.

So it is with our businesses.