by Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, www.nofica.com
If you wish to succeed at something, find a niche and focus on that thing.
Seems pretty obvious, but you would be amazed at how often that advice is ignored.
Before I retired, my livelihood for 30 years was based on bringing small, sick companies back to life. In those years I saw many sick companies, and I found that the primary reason why these companies were failing was lack of focus.
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Company founders usually had a special skill they used to create their companies, but at some point these owners decided that growth or profits would be enhanced if they could add side businesses.
They lost faith in their own visions.
Example: A profitable lawbook company became unprofitable when the owner decided to open a store that sold desk novelties to lawyers. So this owner, who was a great lawbook, telephone salesman, diverted his attention to the complications of running a store.
His lawbook business crashed.
Example: A software company sold a profitable piece of educational software to college students. But the owner, who was an excellent programmer, decided to spend his time creating on-demand, one-of-a-kind software for companies.
He lost focus in his own profitable business.
In both cases, I saved their companies. I added by subtraction. I refocused their businesses on their prime targets, products, and methods.
And in each instance, laser focus on a goal allowed these companies to recover and to dominate their niche.
I believe Black Lives Matter suffers from the same lack of focus I found in failing companies.
Yes, I get it. Who am I, an old white man, to lecture young black men and women about Black Lives Matter?
Obviously, I cannot completely understand their histories, their knowledge, and their motives, but some things are universal, and message focus is one of them.
Focus begins with a goal. What is the goal of Black Lives Matter?
According to BlackLivesMatter.com,
“(The) mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.”
According to Wikipedia,
“Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an organized movement in the United States advocating for non-violent civil disobedience in protest against incidents of police brutality against African American people.”
So it would seem that the original focus of BLM has to do with state-sponsored or state-permitted violence against blacks.
There are numerous other organizations designed to protect blacks against unfair hiring, unfair pay, unfair working conditions, unfair living conditions, unfair educational opportunities, crime, incarceration, biased history taught in schools, drugs, guns, bigotry in the armed services, etc.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), The Southern Poverty Law Center, and numerous other organizations work against all sorts of bigotry against blacks.
They all feel that indeed, black lives do matter.
What makes BLM special? It focuses, or should focus, on government permitted violence against blacks. That is its mission.
Anything other than that diffuses the message, and a diffuse message is not as effective as a focused message.
A FOCUSED LENS LIGHTS A FIRE.
Have you ever heard of a “burning glass”?
It is a convex lens that can focus the sun’s diffuse rays into a narrow area of heat, that can burn combustibles.
For BLM, focus does not include toppling civil war monuments, changing street names, changing sports team names, erasing Mount Rushmore faces, ridiculing articles of clothing, eliminating university courses, burning books, preventing speeches by bigots, demonstrating against Washington, Jefferson, Columbus, or the 4th of July — and not even eliminating police funding.
Yes, all of these have tangential relationships to violence against blacks, just as selling desk novelties has a tangential relationship to selling lawbooks.
But, they are not focused.
They not only are digressions, but are easy targets for accusations of communism, socialism, fascism, or any other unpopular “ism.”
Focus should mean, “Stop police violence against blacks,” not a generalized, anti-bigotry message.
There are enough instances of police violence against blacks to occupy an organization. There is no need to search out other examples of racism, as onerous as they may be.
For instance, trying to reduce police budgets, or to abolish police departments altogether, may seem to some, as noble endeavors, but they are off-target, off-focus, and merely an invitation to opposition for the entire anti-police-violence message.
Those reasonable people, who believe the police are necessary, can be swayed to discount the entire BLM organization when they are told the police should be defunded.
My advice to BLM: Stay on message. Don’t stray into other messages, no matter how worthy they may seem to be.
Keep your eye on the ball. Stay with the program.
Focus.
.
