If you run a business, you know that increasing both your top and your bottom line requires different skill sets. Most leaders favor one over the other. Before the magic can happen you need to assess where your focus has been in the past.
To grow the top line you have to increase sales or revenues, you have to sell more product or services. This is the external focus. You have to provide something that is valued by someone else who will pay you for your efforts.
If you started in Sales or Marketing, or started the business yourself, you probably have laser focus on the external. You are always the Sales Commander in Chief. Typically, you have an intuitive sense of your costs, and you get resist adding infrastructure that doesn’t directly impact increasing revenues immediately. Only when business slows down or you can’t keep up with demand for products or services do you turn your focus to: where is the revenue being spent?
This is the internal focus. Many business executives come from the engineering, product development or creative side. If this is you, you love the technical achievements or the superior functionality or the originality of what you have created. You focus on cool products or services. You tend to focus on cost to market, so bottom line contribution is critical to you. You comb through the expenses and try to squeeze every dollar out of production. You are often frustrated by sales people who are looking outward to the customer. The customer should want what you produce, the way you produce it.
Where the top executives focus is where the rest of the company will work hardest. Given that external and internal focus are both critical for the company to succeed, I suggest for 2014, that you consciously move away from your sweet spot. Let’s see if you can make your weaker side better, without short changing what you do best.