Defining the focus

Last week, the Nine Technology team gathered to have our 2012 kickoff meeting. I took some time in advance of the meeting to write out what I perceived to be the threats and opportunities to Nine Technology in the coming year, and I noticed something: almost 100% of the threats are outside our control. 

It’s sort of freeing to realize that.  It means that all we can do is capitalize on what’s in front of us and what’s available to us. Whatever threats may present themselves, we’ll respond to, but we can’t waste our resources trying to account for things outside our control, so we need to focus on what we can do. And that, for the immediate future, is to ramp up our partner recruitment.

We’ve had enormously successful partnerships with several trade organizations. Each of these organizations has hundreds or thousands of members, some of which sell online backup, some of which don’t. It’s a much better goal for us to target these businesses, something we can control, than it is for us to tilt at windmills.

On a similar note, I urge you and your business to focus on what you have within your control, and que sera sera for what’s outside your sphere of influence. Make some contingency plans, but don’t spend all of your time on it. Focus instead in growing your business where you can.