Decompile Me

Aim For the Bullseye

It took me about 10 years to get rid of. I’m all right now, though, lovely, I’m throwing some nice darts at the moment, but every now and then I get a bit of a jump. I wish I could find a cure, I’d make a bloody fortune. - Eric Bristow, British Darts Champion

Besides revenue, the most significant difference between small and medium-sized businesses is resources. What I’m referring to here is pure body count. The benefit of being small is inherent agility. The caveat with being small can also mean that everyone, including the principals, have to get their hands dirty with day to day operational chores. When you’re in charge of strategy and you’re busy cutting up comps, or writing actionscript, or dealing with payroll, you don’t have the time (or energy) to spend on the big picture.

A while ago I was speaking with a friend regarding the problems of size vs. strategic efficiency, I found his response pretty intriguing:

Consider a bullseye with 3 rings, with each ring representing time:

• The outermost ring represents things that are extremely urgent, but not AT ALL important.
• The middle ring represents things that are BOTH urgent AND important.
• The bullseye represents things that are NOT AT ALL urgent, but extremely important.

Most of us (including me) spend our time in the outermost rings while we should be spending it in the innermost. As LOLZ has grown over the past 3 years, we’ve managed to mentally transition our brains towards the center.

I look at it like this, when you are chasing deadlines or up to your neck in rush work, you’re usually in the outermost ring. When you are working with clients, going to meetings, and writing proposals, you’re in the middle ring.

When you’ve finally got the time to focus on strategy, creativity, and capability… you’ve hit the bullseye.