Focus on your promise like Dropbox and Ryanair

Today's theme is FOCUS. Laser-like, no-distractions, who-cares-what-the-customers-say, this-is-what-guides-our-company focus.

In both looking at Dropbox and Ryanair, one can see how a laser-like focus on the company's core mission or core customer promise has been key to their success.

In the case of Dropbox, a cloud-based file storage/sharing service with a freemium model, as most people know, they offer an EXTREMELY simple customer experience. For most people, you sign up, download the app, install it, and then just save files into the Dropbox folder like you did with any other folder in your hard drive in the past. Sometimes you share files, and any time you get another device you repeat the same, dead-simple process. No fuss, no muss. And while you may have wondered why they don't offer more features, or why they don't have a business version, or why Google or Apple or Microsoft haven't killed they yet (I for one thought they would at various points in the last few years), none of these happen because of their dedication to their core competency and core customer promise: to make a cloud storage and sharing solution that just. plain. works. Regardless of your internet connection, if you're online or offline, if you're using a Microsoft, Apple, or Android device, it just. plain. works.

Don't think that Drew Houston, their CEO (and the MIT classmate that will probably always make me feel like I'm an underachiever), doesn't hear customers complaining about all these other potential features they desperately want him to add; he does. The fact is, though, for every feature change he makes, he always needs to weigh how this may take away from his core mission. Letting you select any folder in your computer instead of the designated Dropbox folder, for instance, is highly requested from customers but would likely end up causing many synching problems with customers.

In the case of Ryanair, an Ireland-based European discount airline, they likewise have had a laser-like focus on their mission. In my mind, they believe that the most important things to travelers is 1) that they get from one city to another, 2) ticket price, 3) that they can rely on the planes being roughly on-time and not being cancelled. Basically, by sticking to these basic priorities and throwing everything else out the window, they've managed to stay the leading (and very profitable) discount airline of Europe. Anything else that doesn't add to this mission is expendable. Free food, free check-in luggage, air bridges, sales agents, using primary airports, window shades, reclining seats, etc can all go out the window. They're willing to throw out any conventional practices as long as it fits their mission. Putting ads on their plane exterior, ads all over seatbacks, and even having an in-flight magazine that's purely ads with no editorial content is not beneath them. Does that make them look cheap? Probably. Do they get tons of customer complaints and do new customers often get angry at their nickle and dime practices? For sure. But are they delivering a useful service, and highly successful? Without a doubt.