A few years ago, a book fell into my hands and I did not pay much attention to it, initially. However, it is enough to take its teachings from nature to understand: the light of a sunny day is diluted by the world, illuminating and sharing energy; a magnifying glass is enough to concentrate the sun’s rays to light a flame. Such is the power of focus, of concentration, of defined vision.
This short book leads us through stories and anecdotes, in a jovial and easy-to-read way, to conclude with three key learnings. It recommends developing an unusual clarity of what you want to achieve, it stresses the importance of understanding that your habits determine your future, and finally, it rescues a simple and powerful idea by pointing out that you should have a zero-exceptions policy, to keep you focused on what you want to achieve.
I insist that the power of a defined visualization in all its extremes is vital. Everything happens at least twice, in your imagination and in reality. Likewise, it is your actions that define you, not your words. And as any professor of strategy will tell you, the important thing to succeed is to stay focused on it and not change it at every unexpected variable.
With most brands without a marketing plan or a defined and sustained brief over time, wouldn’t it be a good idea to transfer these concepts to what we do in business as well? To the work of building emotionally powerful brands? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to focus? I believe that brand-owning firms, brand teams in companies and agencies, in general, lack focus. And those that do are successful.
In my personal experience, staying focused on a dream leads to one possible outcome, and that is that it comes true even sooner than expected. At a dinner a few months ago in Naples, Florida, Jim O’Mahony, Saatchi Saatchi’s CEO for Asia Pacific, EMEA and Latin America, as well as a great friend, told me something that I now say to you: be careful what you dream about… it’s most likely going to happen!