You need to fire 20% of:

• Customers
• Products
• Features
• Things you do every day

each and every year.

A lot of those things made sense last year or the year before.  And a lot of those customers may have been great customers in the past.

But a lot of those products, services and customers are now mediocre–in their benefit to the market and your customers, or in their financial performance.

It’s hard to look yourself in the mirror and say “this is mediocre, let’s do better.”  But you’ve got to do it.  Bob Lefsetz triggered my thoughts on the topic this morning, when he points out that a lot of the time when you ask “how good am I” to the mirror, the response is “not that good.”

Sure, you can go back and try to fix mediocre.  Just like the recording industry or newspapers or the book publishing industry or DVD rentals or….

Don’t manage your business in the rearview mirror looking at the legacy issues that eat up 80% of your time.

You can do better. You can focus.  You must, in order to win.

More to come.