#17 Focus: Key to reset :
How to build Focus Around Customer Benefits
I have been writing blogs based on a chapter in my recent book, The 'Benefit' Blueprint for Startup Success. It is about 25 questions every entrepreneur must ask themselves.
This blog brings me to the 16th question. If you want to dive deeper into other questions, please subscribe to my blog.
Now to question #17:
What is my strategy for overcoming setbacks in delivering customer benefits? While you shift your focus on customer benefits, staff may think they are being ignored or secondary, which may lead to internal conflicts. There may be cost imperatives. You need to come up with the process of engaging with and observing customers, without being intrusive.
Realigning Through Setbacks
Start-ups don’t fail because they lack ideas. They stall, stumble, or lose momentum when their direction becomes unclear or when customer benefit delivery becomes secondary to everything else. Often, when founders suffer from “shiny-itis” and offer everything for everyone, moving from something for everyone.
Setbacks in business are inevitable. But the key question isn’t whether we hit them—it’s whether we realign after them.
🔄 The Entrepreneur's Loop: Enthusiasm Through Disappointment
Winston Churchill said it best:
“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
Entrepreneurs, by nature, cycle through setbacks. They live in a feedback loop of small disappointments and redirections. Staying focused on delivering benefits to customers is what separates those who drift from those who adapt and thrive.
When the product roadmap becomes the obsession, when investor meetings crowd the calendar, or when internal team politics rear their head, the key is asking:
Are we still making the boat go faster?
Ben Hunt-Davis’ Olympic rowing mantra (Will It Make the Boat Go Faster?) reminds us that every action must contribute to our true goal. In startups, that means delivering clear, differentiated customer benefits.
🔺 The Triangle of Focus
Let’s use a triangle metaphor to explore three anchors of startup focus:
Clarity of Value: What exact benefit are we delivering?
Organisational Alignment: Are all teams pulling in the same direction?
Customer Feedback Loop: Are we listening, watching, and adjusting?
When setbacks occur, one or more corners of this triangle has usually gone soft.
✪ Vector Alignment: Elon Musk’s Organisational Geometry
Elon Musk talks about organisational momentum like vector maths. Each team member is a force. But unless all vectors are pointing in the same direction, the net progress can be minimal.
To overcome setbacks:
Align your vectors: Refocus team efforts.
Reduce internal contradiction: Avoid conflicting KPIs or turf wars.
Communicate the customer benefit like a north star.
🏢 What Would Steve Jobs Do?
Jobs wasn’t distracted by noise. He was obsessive about customer experience. He said:
“It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done, and then trying to bring those things into what you’re doing.”
In the face of setbacks, he would narrow the focus, cut features, ignore roadmaps, and return to one thing: what improves the customer experience?
“Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean.” – Steve Jobs
I must confess, this is as much a path to self-discovery as it is about delivering benefits to customers or anything else.
🔹 Ram Charan’s Lens: Execution Through Focus
To quote Ram Charan (Indian-born, Harvard-educated author of Execution):
“The leader's job is not to formulate strategy, but to drive it relentlessly through execution.”
When teams face internal conflict—often caused by shifting focus or unclear messaging—they don’t need more vision. They need tight execution around benefits. The antidote to chaos is clarity of action.
🔴 The Realignment Checklist — Stay on Course
Use this quick founder checklist when setbacks start to stack up:
🤔 What business are we in?
Online tech? Logistics optimisation? Sales for a vertical?
📈 What measurable benefit do we deliver?
Save time, reduce errors, delight customers?
🌌 Is everyone pointing their vector toward the customer?
🔄 Are we in a Red Ocean?
If yes, apply Kim & Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy: Create new categories, not new features.
✅ What are we saying no to?
Remove distractions, side-projects, and bloated roadmaps. Vision must guide you to your north so that you don’t have to call every island along the way as your destination.
💬 When did we last listen to the customer?
Silent companies drift. Listening companies evolve.
◯ Your sphere of resilience
🙏 Purpose: Why do we do this?
💬 Voice: What does the customer say?
⚖️ Judgement: What trade-offs will we accept?
If all three are intact, your business will recover. If any single one fades, rebuild your resilience from the inside out.
□ The Mode, Market, Method (Inspired by Matt Church)
When a business wobbles, revisit:
Market — Who exactly is this for?
Method — What benefit or value is being delivered?
Mode — How is that benefit delivered?
When in doubt, tweak the mode before you change the method. Often, delivery innovation is more effective than product reinvention.
🎉 Setbacks Are Just Signposts
Every setback is a signal: realign, refocus, or reinvent.
Your goal isn’t perfection. Your job as a founder is to keep the customer benefit front and centre, even when things go sideways.
So the next time the wheels wobble, pull back and ask:
“What would make the boat go faster?”
Because in the end, you’re not building features, tech, or even a company. You’re building benefits that people care about. That’s the business you’re in.
© Sameer Babbar
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Disclaimer: This is for information only. It does not consider your objectives, financial situation, or needs. The author, his company, his associates, his directors, his staff, his consultants, and his advisors do not accept liability for any loss or damage, including, without limitation, any loss that may arise directly or indirectly from the use of or reliance on the information provided