This relates directly to the concept of main effort. You can only have one main effort. You must align your strongest resources to the main effort, with supporting thrusts to either support the main effort directly, or to widen the field of manoeuvre for your main effort.
- What activities contribute directly to your main effort and, by extension, your center of gravity/driving force?
- What activities contribute indirectly to these?
- What activities or thrusts must be maintained in order to buy time or generate additional resources to feed into your main thrust/effort?
- What strategic thrusts can or should be more defensive?
- Which thrusts should be more offensive?
- Can you buy time on certain aspects or initiatives in your strategy or plans?
- Can you sequence events and tasks to reassign people and resources as they become available?
- Are there activities that are just dragging you down or holding you back?
- Avoid people that are detrimental to the achievement of your objectives and detract from your main effort.
- And the kicker, if you were starting from scratch, would you even be doing this activity or in this field?
Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.
© 2014 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.