Divide & Conquer

My 10 year old son and 8-year old daughter tend to get along pretty well.

But, there's still times where they're at each others' throats.

The other day was one of those days.

So, my wife and I used our usual plan - divide and conquer.

The divide and conquer plan is pretty simple. She takes one of the kids. And I take the other.

The fighting stops instantly as our kids are separated, and each of our kids gets one-on-one time with one of their parents.

Now, even though we prefer to do things as a whole family, the plan works great. And either later that day, or the next day, we'll regroup and do something as a complete family.

The divide and conquer plan can also be used in your business. For example, clearly there are times when your whole company should meet to form company-wide bonds.

But many other times, you, as the leader, should divide. For example, you should spend time just with your marketing team. That team will then feel special. They will not be jockeying for attention against other parts of the company.

And you can use this time to really focus on that one area. To improve it. To set metrics for the team to perform against.

The leaders of sports teams divide and conquer all the time. A typical professional football coach will do lots of drills with his complete team. And then, like a business, will separate into functional areas led by specific coaches; like the linebackers coach, the wide receivers coach, the quarterbacks coach, and so on.

And then the head coach will circulate among each of these functional areas to add value, support them, and make sure they are getting in position to help the entire organization perform the best it can.

Divide and conquer is also a great technique if your business faces multiple challenges. It is typically most effective to overcome one challenge at a time. While multi-tasking often makes us feel that we are being productive, it often backfires with key tasks not getting done as quickly as they should.

So make sure that you constantly divide or separate your business challenges and functional areas, and conquer or devote the required time to nurture and solve them.