Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman is a book for our coronavirus moment. Chapter 12: Patterns, Systems, and Messes addresses the 1918 flu pandemic. Does Focus have your attention now? Goleman provides many insights we need to understand today. He delivers direct lessons for our new coronavirus world.
Maybe what readers should enjoy is a quick test on your reading memory. What? A memory test in a book? Ah…Yes. This approach brings into sharp ‘focus’ how we read.
Focus addresses how business needs to pay more attention to the market. The refrigerator business does not change. The mobile handset market dramatically changed.
Goleman addresses the sharp rise and sudden fall of Blackberry. A smartphone market lesson would not be complete without a story of Steve Jobs and the iPhone.
And to some extent what Goleman may have missed was the demise of Blackberry was their simple lack of ‘focus’ on 4G networks. Yes, Blackberry actually stayed with 3G, did not embrace 4G just as mobile began BYOD.
Blackberry’s leadership (engineering backgrounds) led them to success very early in the mobile device marketplace. They rested on their laurels. The iPhone killed their company. Smartphones do not equal, as Goleman suggests a refrigerator marketplace. He points to many lessons about corporate shooting stars.
I can personally attest that Apple manufactured over 50 logic boards in the early 90s. From computers, printers, and servers to the emerging digital cameras, portable CD players, interactive TV, gaming consoles, and the Newton, Apple manufacturing was running at capacity with Quadra, Performa and Centris desktops.
Jobs returned to Apple for many reasons, and streamlined manufacturing. Apple was rupturing money. Today Apple’s bottomline is 180 degrees different. Goleman illustrates Apple’s Think Different marketing campaign. He reveals an ability of companies to … of all things … Focus.
Goleman’s best story? His story of a friendship with a kid from a nearby school district illustrated in Chapter 6: Inner Rudder. His friend almost flunked out of school. He liked reading science fiction and tinkering with hot rod cars around highway 99 in California.
His friend was able to land a job in the film industry, becoming a director and producer of a small movie. The movie was on the chopping block by the studio who made too many edits. Yet it taught Goleman’s friend a bitter lesson of Focus.
He did not want a studio cutting and editing his very own story. However he had to find a bank to back his release. He found a bank willing to secure a loan. The movie was Star Wars.
Talks at Google Daniel Goleman: Focus: the Hidden Driver of Excellence
Intelligence Squared: Daniel Goleman on Focus: The Secret to High Performance and Fulfillment