July 2018 — Wilson Growth Partners

In a world of punditry, knowing where people invest will show what they believe.

Geoff Wilson

Where is the most compelling evidence of what you really believe (as opposed to what you say you do)?

It’s in what you own.

More specifically, it’s in where you invest.

Even back to biblical times, it was understood that “where your treasure is, your heart will be also.” That’s Matthew 6:21 (NIV). Where you put your resources reflects what you believe. This is not a new or original concept, but it’s a very important one.

In this age, I’d suggest a couple of alterations to the concept. First, treasure today is as much about time as it is money or assets. Second, because we have so many ways of telling people what we believe (the POTUS likes Twitter), and because we can often conceal where we invest time and money, knowing where others actually place their values can be a challenge.

And that’s the point of this post: Where you invest shows more about what you believe than what you say does. The inconsistency is apparent in “easy” cases like the CEO who says innovation is important but who cuts the R&D budget incessantly; I call this easy because everybody can see it. Where things really get interesting is when you see normally concealed things like the leaders of tech companies not letting their kids use the tech they have helped to develop (cases of this have come out with respect to Apple, Facebook, and others).

That shows what they really believe.

So the next time you are confronted with a leader who says they believe in something, do a little bit of poking around to see where the budget is allocated and where time is allocated. You will often find that what they say doesn’t match what they invest in–like they say they believe in putting the customer first but haven’t talked to a customer in a year.

Talk is cheap.

Oh, and like anything else, this can apply to you. Maybe get your own house in order as well.

Don’t tell me what you believe, show me where you invest. That will tell me what you believe.

What do you think?

You don’t want to miss an opportunity, and that means you might miss them all.

Geoff Wilson

What does a smart strategist do with resources?

Most would say that “strategy” in and of itself depends on focusing the investment of resources against valuable ends. But what happens when you have too many possible directions to go with your resources? Or, worse yet, what happens if you are afraid to focus on a critical few ends?

What if you suffer from an all too human factor: the Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO for short?

Here’s what happens: Your fear of missing out exacts a price on your focus because every opportunity you pursue comes with a little bit of distraction. Call it the fixed cost of opportunity pursuit: The need to organize, plan, and simply think about any given opportunity just to start it up.

To illustrate, assume that you have 100% of your mind to allocate. Now imagine that any given opportunity you pursue comes with a 5% fixed “mind cost” of addressing it. If that’s the case, then addressing three opportunities leaves 85% of your time after the fixed cost (or nearly 30% of your attention per opportunity) to truly develop them. But pursuing five leaves 75% (or about 15% per opportunity) and pursuing ten? That leaves half your time to dedicate and only 5% to pursue each opportunity. And so it goes: The fixed cost of opportunity pursuit, even if it’s small, devours valuable development time. But while the cost of pursuit may be linear, the price you pay per pursuit in terms of dilution is essentially exponential.

And, no, you can’t escape the fixed cost, because it’s more than organizational. Even left fully alone, you have to contend with your own brain, which incurs a cost when shifting gears. That’s why multi-tasking is a dangerous thing. Your brain simply can’t filter out all the noise between the many focus areas.

The impact to your organization is easily as bad. You see this all the time: the organizational costs imposed on opportunity pursuit. They might look like project reviews, justifications, planning meetings, and deployment program reviews, and in some organizations, these exceedingly hungry mandates devour more of the managers’ time than actually pursuing opportunities.

Admit it…you’ve seen this happen. And, all too often, it’s because of the fear of missing out: ol’ FOMO.

But what drives the fear of missing out? In almost all instances it’s confidence. You don’t know enough about a critical few things, so you spread your bets around…only in doing so, you don’t simply allocate resources, you simultaneously dilute them. In gambling terms, you play with scared money; you impose a fear tax. In the process, you often create a lot of really small initiatives that don’t go very far or make much difference. Refer to this article from a few years ago about killing these “gerbils” in your plans. In simple terms, the fear of missing out leads you to this: You don’t want to miss an opportunity, and that means you might miss them all.

So what is the point of all this? It’s pretty basic, actually. Challenge yourself to focus on the critical few things that matter. If you don’t have the confidence to do so, invest the time to build it. Challenge your organization to do the same. That’s what a smart strategist does with resources.

What do you think? Are you diluting your focus out of fear?