VOL 17 - FOCUS FIRST by Lawrence M. Schneider

Your company does not have a shortage of problems. It has too many real problems competing to be first.
 
Sales wants better positioning. Operations wants more capacity. Finance wants tighter cash control. Managers want clearer authority. Customers want faster answers. Employees 
want stability. Every department can defend its priority—and every new priority creates another meeting, dashboard, initiative, and demand on the same limited people.
 
The business is busy. The results are not moving.
 
Focus First is for founders and executives who suspect their company is working hard on the wrong thing. It explains why an overloaded priority list is not a diagnosis, why the 
loudest problem often wins attention, and why a competent solution can still fail when it is aimed at a secondary issue instead of the condition governing the business.
 
Lawrence M. Schneider draws on more than fifty years of CEO-level operating experience to show how capable organizations become trapped in Priority Saturation: too many 
legitimate initiatives, too little sequence, and no shared answer to the question that matters most—what must change first?
 
Inside this volume, you will learn to recognize:
 
• The Equal-Importance Illusion that turns every serious issue into a simultaneous priority
• Loudness Bias, where the most visible customer, executive, or crisis redirects the company
• The Relief Trap, where immediate pressure falls but the recurring condition remains
• First-Move Errors that improve one area while making the governing problem harder to solve
• Priority Burden created by initiatives that are neither active, completed, parked, nor ended