A lot of businesses (especially early stage ones) try to do too much. The bottom line is that you can’t do everything well and you can’t do it all at once. CEOs must look at the three things that can impact their companies the most. Outside of those three things, nothing else matters.

Now, I know that can be an incredibly difficult thing to do for expansion-stage businesses that have dozens of important issues on their plate. And, inevitably, there will be a million things that pop up every year that seem important.

The question CEOs and business leaders need to address, however, is whether those things are really that important. When they aren’t addressed, could they threaten the company’s health or long-term viability? If you don’t fix a particular problem now, will it crush the business or impede its ability to grow efficiently? Without a response to a customer request or a fix every product bug, will you see a mass customer exodus? Is the answer to those questions no? then they aren’t important enough to prioritize over your three key initiatives.

Let us worry about the back end and you can concentrate on your skills.