Horizons of Focus

Renovate AI scaled from 2 to 10 employees in June 2024. Onboarding, new projects, sharing knowledge and strategic alignments - all of this happened in a matter of weeks.

Creating legibility into the system was not optional. If not, I knew we would drown in complexity and distractions. What worked for me and my co-founder - 2 years of relentless hacking - might now work now.

What we needed was ways to look at the problem at different layers of abstraction without sacrificing reality! In other words, I knew in my bones that we are too small a business to work with proxies - be it derived metrics or abstract mental models.

I had a mental image for my core team: Stay calm & strategic with a glass of wine in one hand, and aggressive & tactical with a sword in the other. What we needed was ways to look at the field of play from various vantage points. Sometimes all at once.?

How could I achieve 'hackathon' like environment while maintaining strategic clarity and long view? How do I make sure everyone in the company understands what we are doing and why?

Horizons of Focus (by David Allen of GTD fame)?is one such model to look at our tasks and commitment from different attitudes. It clarifies the ‘why’ and adds energy to tasks and things at hand. It gives all action at play a meaning and a purpose with a perspective of longer term.?

When a team gets all those points aligned—and consistently reinforces them over time—it has access to energy and motivation that is unimaginable without them in place

This is hackathon energy I wanted to maintain growing the team. All the while not taking away the fun in building.

Horizons of Focus are reference points to ensure we are controlling the "right things". In pure programming terms - I wanted abstractions over an underlying todo list as the source of truth (our database). These abstractions live on multiple levels - five different altitudes and one of the ground floor.

From the top down:

Horizon 5 - Purpose and Principles: The big “why?”.?

Horizon 4 - Vision : How do we want to be, and be perceived, in (say) five years? What would wild success look, sound, and feel like, if this project/team won its game?

Horizon 3 - Goals: What are the key things that need to be accomplished? within the next year or two to create the vision??

Horizon 2 - Areas of Focus and Accountability: What are the things that need to be maintained at sufficient levels or standards so we can go forward more effectively??

Horizon 1 - Projects: What do we need to complete within the next few weeks or months, to engage appropriately with all of the above horizons? What needs to be handled, completed, researched, implemented??

Ground - Actions: What physically and visibly needs to be done - now - about any of the above? And who’s responsible for doing it.?

Good ideas can cut both ways. They are sharp. We must not be naive to its applicable limitations. Here is when this model doesn’t work from David's own words:

“... we are not suggesting that you need to have them all defined before you start doing anything. Many times the starting point is, and maybe should be, wherever there’s a “fire in the belly.”

Many entrepreneurs would struggle to articulate what their real purpose was in starting their business. They quickly got busy and haven’t had time to reflect on it since. They may only want or need to get more clarity about their higher horizons when they are approached about a merger, or a buyout, or an acquisition.”

With this at hand, we set out to refined our thinking at each horizon. Now, I spend most of time at Horizon 3, 2 and 1. Staying calm, alert and strategic - with a glass of wine in one hand and a sword in another.