Measure opportunities against your core
Now your organization is rallied around your core. But the real test comes when an opportunity crosses your desk, because you have to decide whether it fits your focus.
That happened to Fisher about four years ago when the company contemplated expanding beyond its major products — mostly options, along with stocks, bonds and mutual funds — to futures and cash foreign exchange.
The first question, obviously, is whether an opportunity lies within your core.
Both futures and foreign exchange could be retail products, so they passed the initial test.
If an opportunity appears to be in your core, then you compare and contrast it with your current offerings.
“They were a little different product than we were trading,” Fisher says. “We started saying, ‘How are these products alike, and how are they (different)?’ and that led us to our decision-making.”
Futures, for example, are exchange-traded and centrally cleared. To optionsXpress, which traditionally acted as a pure broker and earned commission on trade, buying and selling futures wasn’t much different from buying or selling options. Because of the similarities, the company picked it up. Futures now make up 20 percent of its business.
Foreign exchange is not centrally cleared. It’s traded dealer-to-dealer without commission. It looked very different from the current offerings, so Fisher steered clear.
If you’ve clearly defined your core already, it’s less challenging to spot outliers. You’ve already established a measuring stick for opportunities and a reasoning to explain your decision.
“When you’re communicating internally, it’s all about the company’s goals and how does this fit into our goals. It’s not personal,” Fisher says. “If you’re making a decision internally, it’s not because this manager is better than that manager or this project is better than that project. It’s about what are the goals and what best matches up with our goals?”
Saying no gets easier when you use that consistent model and even easier after you make mistakes.
“All you’ve got to do is once or twice go down that path and see how distracting they are, and then you realize you just don’t want to do that,” Fisher says. “That’s the advantage of having spent the time really defining that area of focus is that now it is easier to say no. It’s not making some arbitrary decision: ‘My gut tells me no,’ or doing more and more research to try to prove to yourself. No, it’s just, ‘Look, this is not what we’ve decided should be our core area of focus.’”
Don’t be afraid to say no to opportunities when they don’t fit your focus. Consistency in decision-making will convince the organization that you’re intent on sticking to your core.
“You say no a couple times to those types of projects and people start getting the idea that, ‘OK, this really is our focus and if I want to succeed, that’s where I need to spend my time,’” Fisher says. “The limiting factor is our time, and any time you’re spending outside your core focus is going to take away from your success.”
Saying no to customers can be more difficult than telling employees. It takes a different approach but the same guidelines.
“When you’re talking to customers, it’s always personal, because it’s personal to them,” Fisher says. “So you always need to have it focused around the customer: ‘I understand why you want this project, this tool, this decision, whatever. I understand why that would benefit you. I understand that you think that’s great, and you’re right, this would be a great idea. We’re not going to be able to do it right now because of X, Y and Z.’ You have to acknowledge that it’s more personal when you’re dealing with those customers.”
As long as you’re clear and consistent about your decision in terms of alignment to your core focus, people will get it.
Then, it’s on to the next opportunity and the continual re-evaluation of your core.
“The easiest mistake is to get too locked into a decision,” Fisher says. “You want to make sure you’ve defined your core and you’re sticking to your core, but you’ve also got to give yourself the opportunity to reevaluate it from time to time so you don’t end up going down a dead end.”
How to reach: optionsXpress Inc., (888) 280-8020 or www.optionsxpress.com