Leadership Short: Focus On The Biggest Opportunity

By: Jim Roddy, President & CEO at the RSPA

Busy.

That’s the reply many leaders offer when asked how they’re doing.

We’re all busy, but are the right activities keeping us occupied?

The concept of Focus On The Biggest Opportunity – which can be shortened to the fun acronym FOTBO – is the act of emphasizing tasks that have the maximum impact on your company’s goals.

Any time you have a choice about what task to accomplish, you can choose among many categories of tasks:

  • Tasks that are easy and enjoyable for you to accomplish
  • Tasks that are quickest to complete (short, one-time jobs)
  • Tasks that will make you look good; tasks that are most public
  • Tasks that have the largest impact on the company

Unfortunately, we will often choose a task that falls into one of the first three categories. The fourth choice – tasks that have the largest impact on the company – is always the right choice. The key is to balance Focusing On The Biggest Opportunities with all your other duties.

The six steps to Critical Thinking (especially the first three) will help you determine your biggest opportunities:

  1. Fully understand the philosophy and process of the best practices.
  2. Fully understand the situation.
  3. Clearly define the desired outcomes.
  4. Detail your action plan.
  5. Evaluate your plan.
  6. Develop a contingency plan.

Register today for the retail IT channel’s #1 trade show, education conference, and networking event. RetailNOW 2026 is set for July 26-28 at the new Caesars Forum in Las Vegas. It’s Where The Industry Meets!

FOTBO is a both a self-accountability tool and a time management technique. Poor time management is the #1 excuse why important jobs aren’t completed.

That excuse takes many different forms which I’m sure you’ve heard (or said) before:

  • “I’m being pulled in a bunch of different directions”
  • “Something came up”
  • “I don’t have enough bandwidth”
  • “I didn’t have time”

Commit to hold yourself and your co-workers accountable for Focusing On The Biggest Opportunity. Frequently ask yourself: “Is this the most important thing I could be working on right now?”

One way I’m following the FOTBO principle is the brevity of this blog post. Writing is an enjoyable task for me, each article is a one-time job, and the published piece is very public.

But what’s best for RSPA right now is me focusing on the upcoming RetailNOW 2026 show, gathering feedback on a possible new membership pricing structure that would increase association revenue and improve retention rates, and exploring expansion of the RSPA Member Directory to better serve our 750 member companies.

A series of 2,000-word missives to the retail IT channel would generate website traffic and make me busier than a conspiracy theorist with a fresh roll of red string, but that would not be my highest and best use.

Again, frequently ask yourself: “Is this the most important thing I could be working on right now?” and then act accordingly.

Be sure to register today for the retail IT channel’s #1 trade show, education conference, and networking event: RetailNOW 2026, July 26-28 at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas

Jim Roddy is the President and CEO of the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA). He has been active in the retail IT channel since 1998, including 11 years as the President of Business Solutions Magazine, six years as an RSPA board member, one term as RSPA Chairman of the Board, and several years as a business coach for VARs, ISVs, and MSPs. Jim has been recognized as one of the world’s Top Retail Experts by RETHINK Retail and is regularly requested to speak at industry conferences on SMB best practices. He is author of two books – The Walk-On Method To Career & Business Success  and  Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer – and is host of the award-winning  RSPA Trusted Advisor podcast. For more information, contact JRoddy@GoRSPA.org.