Insights

An offering is a product, service or a combination of both that you choose to sell in a market. In other words, an offering is a solution that you sell to a type of customer, in a region against the competing choices. There is always another choice to what you chose to sell. Customers will pay for what you sell or they won’t. It’s that simple. The brutal truth is that most offerings will fail. You can’t just want to survive. You need to focus on both value creation and success to win. If you don’t play the game to win, why are you playing?

It’s hard to win with your offering if you don’t think things through. First, you have to see that your offering is the atomic unit of value creation and success. Next, you need to be able share what you see with the people that matter most. Then you need to commit to do what matters right now. It is an adaptive loop. You need to believe to achieve. It is not true that believing is just seeing. Believing is seeing, sharing and doing what matters right now.

Focus provides you with a clear picture. A picture of what is important, what you need to share and what you need to do now. With focus, you will see, share and do what matters as well as ignore what doesn’t. It doesn’t matter if the picture is complete. It just needs to be coherent, communicable and actionable. An incomplete picture is better than nothing.

You and your people that matter most need to focus on your most important offering. To win means you create value and succeed. First, you need to develop a consensus. There needs to be clarity. Next, you need to see how the things fit together. There needs to be alignment. Finally, you need to take action. You need to prioritize what matters and ignore what doesn’t. There needs be priority. Clarity, alignment and priority is the path to winning.