People often see multitasking as a crucial skill at work. In reality, you can only be in one place and do one thing at a time. While working with different ideas, tasks, and projects is inevitable, the ability to focus and direct your energy to the most important thing is key to achieving desired results.
That’s why we strive to stay focused at Hostinger. I’ll share why maintaining such focus requires more than just a cup of coffee when working as Vice President (VP) of Product at Hostinger.
Different perspectives, one goal
When I joined Hostinger, I found myself in a dynamic environment with plenty of good ideas and diverse perspectives. As VP of Product, I must consider all of them. Essentially, swiftly shifting between these points of view and focusing on the most important things is my job description.
I must always be aware of various teams’ different perspectives and focus areas while keeping the big goal in mind. This bigger goal guides my decisions regarding my focus.
Of course, the Customer Success team focuses on good customer service, marketing people focus on engagement and conversions, and engineers focus on product functionality and technical aspects. All these focus areas are interconnected, and I have to figure out which we should emphasize at any given time.
Focus as responsibility
Focusing is as much a work principle as a practical skill for maximizing productivity and organizing things efficiently. This is because you must focus not just on yourself but also on others to truly achieve great results at work.
Suppose you are on the technical side of things, and you have a request to program a certain feature. The next day, you hear that this work must be put on hold because now there is a different task to prioritize. Situations like this create chaos and don’t help achieve results.
Focus is not a nice thing to have, but a must – it represents responsibility towards others whose time and efforts are wasted if there’s no focus at a decision-making level.
Getting things done
Focus also helps to get things truly done. As resources are always limited, directing them to the right focus areas allows us to solve the root causes of problems instead of trying to fix secondary issues, which can also be numerous.
For example, problems and incidents always emerge within product-related contexts, so it is easy to get lost in them. Plus, there are also different perspectives. Business people might want to solve some problem immediately, and engineers might believe it is enough to mitigate rather than eliminate certain issues. The right solution must be found that would best align with the organization’s goals and bring long-term value.
Without focus, it would be tough to do.
Let’s take solving DDoS attacks on a DNS cluster as an example. DDoS attacks are common, but the long-standing view was that we could do nothing about them except wait them out. There was a misalignment of perspectives – management wanted to solve the problem, but engineers believed that we could not overspend on this issue. After properly focusing on the DDoS attacks issue, we found the solution.
The result? We managed to increase the servers’ capacity to achieve almost 100% uptime.
Enhancing focus with data
I want to emphasize that the decision to focus on DDoS attacks didn’t come solely from my intuition. It was supported by data about downtime costs and their impact on client satisfaction.
We have so many data sources and such a good data management team that it would be a shame not to use them to make better decisions. However, it is crucial not to be flooded with all this data but to have relevant information sets readily available for various needs.
In other words, for different contexts, we must focus on different data.
Avoiding miscommunication
As important as data is, it does not bring focus. To achieve it, you must work towards it and develop certain habits. For starters, I recommend learning how to eliminate distractions.
It starts with simple things, like blocking your calendar and reserving enough focus time on your schedule. Even how we write messages and emails can contribute to being more focused. It’s all about minimizing the possibility of miscommunication, which does not help you stay focused.
When you write an email or message, you must consider the receiver’s perspective – how will they interpret the message. Also, try to be concise and put the most important information at the beginning.
Learning how to talk straight to the point while being aware of other people’s contexts can help a lot.
Clear communication is critical when explaining your choice of a certain focus area to various stakeholders. This discussion should be based on rational arguments and data rather than emotions.
The value of OKRs
Everyone has to select, prioritize, and execute to achieve results that contribute to the big picture. That’s why staying focused on the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework is so important. At Hostinger, it concentrates effort, facilitates focus, and helps everyone to stay on course.
Viewed from the OKRs lens, focusing also implies execution. Because no matter how brilliant an idea appears, if there is no way to execute it, this idea does not contribute to OKR goals. In other words, it is rather a distraction or merely an inspiration.
Generally speaking, focusing means doing things that could have the biggest impact. To have an impact, you must execute, not just have ideas.
From an organizational standpoint, structuring workloads into smaller sprints and cycles of iterations also contributes to maintaining focus. Accordingly, OKRs are divided into smaller goals that allow for measuring shorter-term progress within the broader context and help maintain focus on both.
I couldn’t stress enough that OKRs are the key to staying focused, understanding where your colleagues are focused, and then helping them. I genuinely think that Hostinger instrumentalizes the OKR framework well. OKR sheets have everything that needs to be considered in maintaining focus – the product, the money, and the customer metrics are all on track.
So, we have one of those good problems – how to improve from an already strong base.
Adapting and evolving
An organization that iterates and adopts the OKR framework will eventually become a winner. This framework helps create the right culture and approach to success.
If you iterate and learn, there is no option to fail. It’s like evolution – you keep on adapting.
If you iterate your focus, it means you can survive, outcompete your competitors, adapt to the changing environment, be flexible, and adopt the best solutions for you. When you choose the right focus points, with 20% of your time and effort, you can achieve 80% of the results.
There are always things you can improve, but some improvements bring much more value than others. That’s why I encourage everybody to focus, iterate, and learn in the process.
Being focused is undoubtedly a strength, and focusing on the right things at the right time is a significant advantage that allows us to maximize our energy. It helps us grow and our organization succeed.
So, let’s stay focused.
As VP of Product at Hostinger, Saulius oversees Web Hosting Platform & Tools, Managed WordPress, and WebPro Experience. Saulius enjoys observing users through their daily life activities, looking for problems to solve, and building products that make users more efficient online, help them spend more time on the things they love, and leave all the rest for technology to solve.
