I recently did a workshop titled “Strategic Planning for Peak Performance” and thought I would share a few points from that workshop on the blog. A good number of the points covered work on an individual as well as the larger business landscape in that we frequently set about brainstorming to get a plan for what we think needs to be accomplished. with that in mind, we get really focused on the planning aspect and you can imagine what went through the minds of the participants when I made the statement that “Strategic planning is not really about planning.”
To quote Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School, one of the leading theorists in business Strategic planning: “Strategic planning is concerned with defining competitive advantage and the development of activities, resources, and capabilities that enable sustaining that advantage in a rapidly changing environment.”
To put it another way: Before you decide what you want to do, one needs to define what it is that you are good at and how you want to marshal your resources to support that competitive advantage. Every business or individual is good at something and it makes sense, as any sports coach will tell you, to play to your strengths. Keep in mind that this does not mean you should not try other things, only that you need to decide what you are not able to do well right now. In the simplest terms: it is a matter of focus.
A good example would be that you play both golf and tennis. You play golf almost at the level of a pro but for tennis you are considered poor to at best average. And yet, half of your time is spent playing golf and the other half tennis. I’m not 
saying you should not play tennis but it would be better to have the majority of your efforts allotted to playing golf which has the potential to produce better than average results and raise your profile, with a lesser amount of time spent playing tennis. At the very least with the potential profits you gain from golf you could afford tennis lessons to improve your level of play some time in the future.
The concept of focus becomes vitally important because so many people attempt to cover a multitude of areas, and they ultimately end up spreading themselves so thin they don’t appear good at any of them. Play to your strengths! From there you can build in other areas that can then expand your coverage and perceived competence.