Land of the Lost

I was walking through Wal-Mart the other day, when I passed three young kids just kind of messing around.  As I zipped pass them on my way to find a phone cord, the biggest one looked around and said, “Hey, where’d Mom go?” After paying attention long enough to make sure they connected with someone, I went on my way thinking about how applicable that question is for business. (Kind of weird, I know.)

Those kids had only one point of reference for where they were supposed to be, what they were doing and why they were even there. And it was no longer in sight. They knew they needed to find it before they really got lost (and probably got in trouble). How easy is it for us to lose our focus and get distracted  — and lose a lot of ground before we even realize what happened?

We can get caught up doing all kinds of things related to our business that over time, can cause problems. We can get over-distracted by social media, we can read too many how-to or motivational books or check out one too many blogs on the greatest new software. We can even turn legitimate networking into just hanging out.

Sounds like fun, but if we linger too long, and our focus on the core tasks slip, we can find ourselves standing in the aisle looking at each other wondering where everyone went.