Leadership priorities are often easy to describe but much harder to live.
In this article, I explore two common ways leaders lose sight of what matters most — and the lesson that helped shape my own approach to leadership throughout my career.
This article is part of our Leadership Series — reflections on inspiration, influence, and the choices that shape meaningful achievement.
I’ve found there are two ways to lose the main thing: never identify it, or stop making time for it.
I Grew Up in a Military Family
My father began his career as a naval test pilot and later became a commanding officer.
At one point I even worked for him when he was the Executive Officer at the Naval Air Station on Guam. I was a lifeguard at the base swimming club.
Looking back, I’m grateful for what I learned growing up in a military family.
Discipline, structure, and clarity.
There are a few leadership lessons I still associate with my father. One of them has stayed with me throughout my career.
Keep the main thing the main thing.
Two Ways We Lose Sight of What Matters Most
It sounds so simple.
But there are at least two ways we lose sight of the main thing.
The first is that we never clearly identify what it is.
The second is that we know exactly what it is, but our time and attention drift elsewhere.
The First Way We Lose the Main Thing
In every Customer Service course we run, we ask frontline participants this question:
What do you produce or make?
The answers are usually things like customer satisfaction, connection, loyalty, and relationships.
But that’s not what we produce. Those are the outcomes we hope to create.
The correct answer — the main thing we produce — is conversations.
Words are our tools.
For a frontline service professional, that’s keeping the main thing the main thing.
Focus on getting better at the conversations and the skills that support them. The outcomes we’re seeking become much more likely.
I’m not suggesting great conversations are the only thing that matters.
Only that they’re one of the main things.
The Second Way We Lose the Main Thing
The second way we lose the main thing is different.
There is clarity about what the main thing is, and there is every intention of doing it well.
But there’s a gap in execution.
Here’s an example.
In leadership and people management courses, we ask Team Leaders what the most important part of their role is.
Most Team Leaders know exactly what that main thing is.
You’ll almost always hear the same answers:
- Developing people
- Coaching
- Supporting performance
Then we complete a simple exercise.
We ask Team Leaders to estimate, in writing, where their time actually goes over the course of a typical week.
More often than you’d expect, much of their time is consumed by meetings, reporting, emails, administration, and operational issues.
Meanwhile, the time invested in developing people often ranges from just 2 to 15 hours out of a 40-hour work week.
And those figures can come from Team Leaders working in the very same organization.
The purpose of the exercise is to create awareness of the gap between what they say is important and where they actually spend their time.
For me, that is where the real learning begins.
From there, we can talk about strategies to close the gap.
The challenge isn’t that Team Leaders don’t know the main thing. It’s that the demands of the role gradually pull them away from it.
Finding My Way Back to the Main Thing
I eventually had to learn this lesson myself.
In the early years, after I opened my company, I spent most of my time doing what I loved most — developing training programs and teaching them.
The business grew rapidly, and we eventually opened offices in multiple countries.
I found myself spending less and less time doing the work that had inspired me to build the business in the first place.
Training had always been my main thing.
But the bigger the business became, the further away I drifted from that work.
Eventually, and not without some difficulty, I had to make a conscious decision about my role.
I redesigned it so I could spend more time serving clients and participants again — doing the work where I believed I could contribute the most.
It remains one of the most important decisions I’ve ever made.
Sometimes keeping the main thing the main thing isn’t about clarity or working harder.
It’s about having the awareness and courage to realign your work with what matters most.
Thank You for Reading
I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this article resonated with you, I’d be pleased to stay connected.
Feel free to get in touch anytime, or explore more of our work below.
Daniel Ord
[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com
