One thing most successful leaders do well is delegate. Being completely open and honest—this has never come naturally to me. As a busy manager and classic over-committer, I often chose to do something myself that could have been done just as well or better by another member of my team. As a result I spent too much time and energy on stuff I didn’t like to do and wasn’t very good at.

The Core Focus clearly defines your company’s sweet spot – work you love to do and are best at. Used properly, it helps you stay laser-focused on the stuff you do that most consistently delights your customers, makes you money, and allows you to have the most fun. To get it right, you’ve got to resist the temptation to try being all things to all people, and to ignore “shiny stuff.”

This sounds easy, but is often very hard, and surprisingly costly. One of my clients admitted this last week – and the story was so good I asked him to write a guest blog on the subject. Enjoy…

I concluded my prior blog article, How many Meetings Do I Need With Whom?, urging you to do highly focused meetings with the fewest, right people participating. This article will give you some practical guidelines for using meetings to share information.

This week I was fortunate enough to conduct workshops for a room full of entrepreneurs in two different cities. I say fortunate, because time is always precious for busy entrepreneurs. Those who regularly take the time to learn, share, and grow inspire me. It’s a great honor when they give some of that time to me.

If you don’t answer this common leader question properly, as your business grows in number of customers, employees, vendors and initiatives, you will experience a scalability problem. You will find yourself spending a disproportionate amount of your time in meetings and your frustration will grow as you realize you can’t effectively communicate with everyone. It’s not physically possible.