Creating focus

Where you are

In his book "Essentialism" Greg Mckeown has a little diagram like this, describing what happens to our lives when we don't think about what we are doing, and not deliberately working toward doing those things that we really believe to be of value.

This is not only true of individuals and our inability to focus on what is important, or of essence, it is also of critical importance that organizations do this. 
In organizations it is even more likely to happen to have this divergence, since there are more people, and more ideas, inspirations, and experiments of what could be done, and sometimes what should be done. 
This willingness and ability to experiment is critical for organizations, and some have even institutionalized it by allowing, encouraging a portion of time dedicated to that. (But it cannot be the business model, unless you are in a startup mode, and even then the experimentation is channeled.)

This, however should not lead to an organization that looks like the exploding star above, since it will get you nowhere. 

The real power of goals, strategies, and coherent business models is to define, related, and harness these elements, share them, and ensure that the activities are directed towards everyone moving coherently in the same direction. 

When there are competing goals, you will have forces working against each other and cancelling each other out. Even when there is agreement on the goals, but the strategies are defined poorly, e.g. without clear indications of what product/segments mix, which market we are going after, then there will be diffusion of effort and a blunting effect. 
We also need to ensure that our business model is most suitable to execute the strategy. (The business model is the structure and relationships between your customers, products (value proposition), channels and relationship, income/expenses, processes, and resources, that you apply to successfully engage with the customers. Your industry, products, customers, supply-chain, channels, etc. will all play a role.) Fielding the wrong business model will divert your efforts and energy. 
Once you have the appropriate model in place, then we are making real progress to removing the excess of little, divergent arrows, in favor of more concentrated and clear objectives. However, we also need to make sure that our capabilities are clearly defined, responsibilities assigned, and coordination spelled out. This will include having the appropriate technologies, team members (internal and external) in place, the right processes, and the appropriate information to execute.

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The strategy will not describe in detail what the execution looks like, but it will describe the intent, and the context. It will also assign leading responsibility, but also support and coordination from other parts of the organization. 
When the goals, strategies, metrics, business model, capabilities with people, process, technologies, and information are lined up, then you will be directing your organizational energy far more efficiently, looking like this (again, credit to Greg McKeown):

Where you want to be