Sharpening Your Focus: 'Hone' Authors on How Leaders Can Keep Their Businesses on Track

A restaurant that does everything right is a gift, a treasure, especially in small-town America.

Because there are so few, when an exceptional restaurant gets into trouble or goes out of business, we feel a sense of loss and often wonder what happened.

It is just sad all the way around.

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That's what "Catherine" was trying to prevent when she emailed:

"Mr. Beaver, 'Patrick,' my husband, is a gifted chef, and we dreamed of a restaurant with a small, intimate space — just a few tables. Several months ago, we opened 'Patrick's Place,' and in no time, it became the town's favorite, where you had to book a week in advance.

"Friends and potential investors are trying to convince him to relocate to a space six times as large. But I warned, 'That was not our goal! You can't clone yourself. We can rent the vacant office next to us now, open a wall and have one-third more seating space. Unless you find someone with your skills who wants to come to this small town, by caving in to the pressure to expand, we will lose customers and go out of business!'

"My husband is stubborn but likes your column. Do you know something he can read that might keep us on course?"

Indeed, I do.

Path to trouble: Losing track of your North Star

Business consultants and authors Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach have written a compelling and accessible prescription for staying on track, Hone: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift, which is as applicable to Patrick's Place as it is to a corporation that employs thousands.

I had the most interesting Zoom interview with Tuff and Goldbach in which they defined "drift" as the deviation of a business from its intended path, its reason to exist and its elemental purpose, its North Star.

The best way to prevent drift is through "honing," which involves making continuous, purposeful adjustments to stay on track with your purpose, much like a chef hones a knife daily to maintain its sharp edge.

These authors have created an aha moment that explains how an enterprise of whatever size can slowly drift into hot water due to a lack of situational awareness.

During our interview, we discussed several of the threats to the survival of any business, no matter its size. Two issues the authors flagged for business owners:

No. 1: It's important to understand the danger of pressure to grow

Customers want consistency and predictability — it's what keeps them coming back. When companies, over time, change what they have been doing, sometimes the magic and the elemental purpose — their reason for existing — is washed away.

Pressure to grow — the temptation of greater profits — often leads to the business owner greatly expanding their footprint or establishing a second location. This can easily result in drifting off course and away from what made the business successful — its elemental purpose.

The risks include shutting down, being unable to pay suppliers and employees and facing lawsuits because, like Catherine's fear for Patrick, the owner was convinced that "bigger is better." They learn the hard way that bigger is not always better.

It is clear that Patrick is on a path that could see his restaurant drift in a direction that predictably could lead to failure, while his wife believes that gradually expanding would be more manageable — an example of honing.

No. 2: You need to keep an eye on the little things that can lead to drift

Forgetting about the needs of the people who are important to your business leads to drift. Pursuing growth or change that takes you away from your elemental purpose, resulting in a failure to uphold the standards you established in the beginning, is a path that can prove costly.

A business will rarely make a decision that is immediately destructive. More often, it's more of a gradual catastrophe because the owner ignored small things and didn't notice the impact they were having.

Then they wake up one day, and it seems that, all of a sudden, something has broken: Where are the customers?

Consider a fast-food restaurant or a chain coffee shop that offers more and more menu items that seem, at the time, to be valid. One day, the bosses realize that customers are waiting too long, and some are even walking away. Employees are unhappy, too.

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This would be a case of drift. The solution is to take a leap back in time to restore what the business was before things got out of hand.

What will lead to success?

The authors underscored that the path to success requires:

Having a clear sense of why your business exists from the points of view of your customers, employees and all the relevant stakeholders.

Asking yourself, "What do my people need to do in order to deliver on the business' purpose? Does our structure enable this to happen or interfere with it?"

Embracing curiosity — this is one of the most valuable tools in your toolbox. How can you improve? How can you make things better? Seeking ways to enhance employee engagement and customer relations should be your goal.

Hone took me back to high school when a classmate read a poem aloud, and everyone said, "That's exactly how I feel, but I could never put it into words this way!"

Tuff and Goldbach have put into words the things in business we've all looked at but maybe didn't see.

Dennis Beaver practices law in Bakersfield, Calif., and welcomes comments and questions from readers, which may be faxed to (661) 323-7993, or e-mailed to Lagombeaver1@gmail.com. And be sure to visit dennisbeaver.com.

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