Going Past the Surface

Today was yet another test on my path to my third degree black belt. It seems like this has been going on forever, but I've only been in this frequent testing mode for the last eight months.

I'll be glad when it's done.

Part of today's test was a board-breaking. I had to perform a spinning side-kick off my left leg and break two boards at once. Not impossible, but certainly not easy.

Once you get past the actual technique you are using (chop, kick, elbow, whatever) a board-breaking comes down to two things (and please don't try this at home):

1. Hit the board really, really hard.

2. Strike through the board.

The second one is what causes most people to fail their breaks. They hit that board as hard as they can and then stop as soon as they come in contact with its surface.

In the web world this is a lot like a company setting up their website -- putting in all that work to design a great-looking site, using all of the latest technologies to make it fresh and exciting -- and then as soon as they launch it, they think that they're done and that they never need to look at it again. Weeks, months, and even years pass by with no changes made and fewer and fewer visitors. Here's the thing: The failure wasn't in the site itself.

It was in the lack of focus beyond the launch.

So, in your business what failures are caused by focusing on the surface?