How should a leadership team actively use the Core Focus and Target Market in the V/TO to kill legacy products or fire distracting clients rather than treating the document as high-level marketing words?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The Vision/Traction Organizer is only valuable when it acts as an operational filter for saying no. Most leadership teams treat the V/TO like an aspirational plaque on the wall. They agree on a Core Focus and Target Market during their session day, and on Monday morning they accept any customer with a checkbook while maintaining unprofitable legacy service offerings.

To turn your V/TO into a living decision tool, bring it directly into your quarterly planning sessions and weekly Level 10 Meetings. When an opportunity, custom project request, or client issue emerges, run it through the Core Focus filter before debating resources. The test is absolute: Does this prospect match our Target Market, and does this work sit directly inside our Passion, Purpose, or Just Cause and our Niche? If the answer is no, the debate ends immediately.

Every quarter, your leadership team should review your bottom twenty percent of accounts and legacy offerings against your Target Market. If an account requires non-standard operating processes, distracts your delivery team, and generates substandard margins, that account is actively destroying company value.

Use the V/TO to justify a clean transition plan or a substantial price adjustment that moves non-ideal clients out. A strategy is defined far more by what you refuse to do than what you agree to take on. If your V/TO does not actively kill bad revenue, it is just decorative corporate paper.