Finding Your Focus: How to Identify the Key Strategic Priority That Will Transform Your Business

From CANVA

In the fast-paced modern economy, many promising startups fail, and established companies falter because they lack strategic focus.

Without a clear direction, resources get spread thin across too many competing priorities. Our recent survey reveals that top executives are overwhelmed by data overload, organizational complexity, uncertainty about the future, and misalignment across leaders—all barriers to arriving at a clear focal point.

To thrive in such chaos requires identifying that one make-or-break priority area for your business to champion above all else—your strategic focal point. This provides a bullseye for decisions and investments, enabling both small enterprises and large corporations to drive transformational results.

This calls for a business telescope analysis.

To begin, evaluate your values and core strengths. Establish clarity with your business DNA—your values and capabilities.

Next, look at the business through a variety of lenses, like the customer lens, competitor lens, and employee lens, to identify high-impact opportunities in the external landscape to focus on. Select the option that best fits your identity and offers disproportionate upside to provide the direction that is needed.

Then, define the ideal future state for your business. The future state gives important context on timing, objectives, and direction for the focal point.

Once the focal point is identified, the strategy involves:

1. Investing disproportionately in this area to scale up capabilities and advantage
2. Aligning business decisions to amplify the focal point
3. Leveraging strategic levers like cost leadership or differentiation to accelerate it
4. Spreading the impact through multipliers (Marketing, talent and technology) that can drive customer reach, revenue growth, and market expansion
5. Continuously optimizing to sharpen the focus as the competitive context evolves

The ultimate goal is to concentrate everything around this north star priority to maximize its impact.

While finding this central focal point requires experience and business acumen, artificial intelligence tools can help analyze options and model future scenarios. Generative AI’s ability to synthesize insights and develop strategies can enhance human expertise in crafting an effective strategic focus.

The companies that thrive going forward will be those that identify and act on that one distinctive capability or advantage that enables transformative change. Defining a clear focal point provides the focus needed to separate from competitors and become an industry leader. It all starts with determining that one make-or-break priority area for your business.

We hosted a LinkedIn Live Session on — 202X Vision: The Focal Point with AI. You may watch the recording or read a detailed article on Finding Your Focus: How to Identify the Key Strategic Priority That Will Transform Your Business.