Battling goal overload: achieving clarity and focus with Kanban

I once worked at a company that had 15 areas of “focus” for a given year. Attached to each of these areas were several goals. For a fairly small company, this resulted in roughly 50 goals that the product teams were to focus on in a given year. It was mind blowing. Some of the goals were narrow, e.g. launch product in market X, others were extremely broad, e.g. become more customer focused.  

Granted, not every team was affected by every area and goal. The areas of focus were also prioritized. Nevertheless, I always felt this lingering expectation that every area needed to be served. While we did have some success in that environment, it’s needless to say that it did cause a lot of issues. Mostly it meant the teams became less productive because they constantly had to shift focus. It also led to conflict between teams that were dependent on one another but focused on different topics. 

Recently reading the great book Empowered by Marty Cagan,I came to the conclusion that lack of focus is likely the single reason why companies don’t fulfill their potential. 

Today, I am sorting out my thoughts on this topic. I will explain why lack of focus on the organizational level is such a massive problem and share tactics that helped me deal with the situation in the past. 

 

Multitasking doesn’t work

Let’s start here, with a topic I have covered a few times already: multitasking. In short, it doesn’t work for individual people. It doesn’t work for teams. And it doesn’t work for organizations. 

The issue with multitasking is the cost of context switching. Your brain needs to “warm up” to new topics before you can actually be productive. The more often you switch topics, the more time will be spent on wrapping your head around the problem. You spend less time being productive. You get less done. 

The same applies to teams and entire organizations that constantly need to switch focus. The more things they are forced to focus on, the less they get done. 

I strongly believe that many of the common issues we encounter in our daily product development efforts are downstream of this lack of organizational focus. 

If there was a clear area of focus, teams wouldn’t end up with constant, unrelated requests to implement this one crucial feature needed for that one important customer. Teams wouldn’t end up with a constant change of strategy. Teams wouldn’t need to have to worry about dependencies to other teams working on completely unrelated things. 

Product development life would be so easy.

Why do companies not provide sufficient clarity?

I don’t think many people will argue with me about the contents so far. Generally speaking, people will agree that multitasking doesn’t work and that too many goals for an organization is a bad thing. Nevertheless, there are plenty of instances where a small company somehow still ends up with 50 goals for one year. 

I see two causes for this, a lack of patience and lack of decision making power.

Some organizations or its leaders lack the patience and can’t wait for one thing to be done before starting the next thing. They get antsy because they see all of the potential, all of the things that could or should be done. They want everything done at once and give out too many goals.

Insecurity or a lack of decision making power can play a role as well. Maybe there is a board or a mother company that has control over the executives. These executives want to show that they are aware of all the issues facing the company. They want to show they are on top of things and thus commit to trying to solve them all at once. 

It’s already hard to say “No, we won’t be doing this right now” when you are a Product Owner talking to stakeholders. It’s much harder to say this to people who have the power to fire you, particularly if you are under pressure to deliver business results. 

How to deal with a lack of focus 

So what can we do? Fortunately there are some tactics to deal with the situation. For me, a few things have worked in the past.

• Publicly fixing priorities (for a time)
• Going rogue
• Using Kanban as a communication tool 

Publicly fixing priorities (for a time)

As I already discussed this in my previous article on dealing with constant change of strategy or priorities, I won’t go into too much detail here.

In short, I have had some success in the past negotiating very few – ideally only one – goals that are fixed for at least some time. In my case it was always a negotiation between the product organization and the leadership team in the course of quarterly planning. 

Ideally, the results are publicly announced in some big meeting and the results are ceremoniously communicated across the organization. This increases the barrier to changing focus areas. 

This will require significant communication, first to align between product teams and then to negotiate with leadership. But if done successfully the organization at least ends up with a smaller focus for some defined time period.

Going rogue

If you can’t agree to a reduced list of focus areas for a defined period of time, you can always go rogue. (To be less sensationalist, I could als phrase it as taking ownership.) This means deciding unilaterally that you will only be focusing on one thing, and this one thing only. You do this either until you’ve reached a target state or until a predetermined amount of time has passed.

In this instance you reject all requests and activities that are not related to the one thing you are focused on. 

Needless to say, depending on how you communicate this, it can backfire very easily. But it can also lead to exceptional results. If you are able to convey the issues that multitasking is causing and have sound reasoning as to why you are focusing on that one thing, in my experience most stakeholders actually appreciate this approach.

It shows that you are willing to take on responsibility and ownership.   

Using Kanban as a communication tool

A kanban board is a great tool to use in communicating what you are currently focusing on. It strikes a nice balance by making sure you focus on one thing at a time but showing that you are aware of all the other goals. It’s like a softer version of going rogue. Because you will at some point also focus on other things. After all, they are right there in the Kanban’s To Do column. Noone knows when that will happen, though. Could be next week, could also be in two years.

The important thing is to limit the in progress goals to one and to make sure, there are clear criteria for when a goal is achieved. If there are no clear success criteria, it’s always a good idea to define some. You can do that on your own.

If you are in a leadership position, you can also think about implementing a goal Kanban for the entire organization. You can create a backlog of goals and simply move those to In Progress that should be the current focus. Make sure you don’t exceed the limit of goals that are in progress. Ideally this limit is one. The size of the organization may dictate that the limit is higher. 

This approach is not that different from using a Now, Next, Later roadmap.

How to thrive in a company that lacks focus

I believe that a lack of focus is the biggest reason for companies not achieving their full potential. Exposing an organization to a large number of goals at once forces everyone in it to multitask. This doesn’t work and causes tremendous amounts of waste. 

As a product team, in order to deal with this situation, you need to resist the urge to do multiple things at once. Instead, try to focus on one goal at a time. If there is no official process for doing so in the company, you can always unilaterally decide to do so. Create your own little island where you focus on one thing at a time. Just make sure you communicate this well. Kanban can be a very effective communication tool in that instance, similarly to the Now, Next, Later roadmap. 

This is how you can thrive in a company that lacks focus, even if you are assigned 15 areas of focus and 50 goals. If done well, it’s also a way to stand out. Positively.