Why "one" is non-negotiable
Multiple focuses dilute effort and metrics. Everyone is working on something important. Nobody is working on the same thing. "What do we do next?" becomes unanswerable because the answer is "everything." One focus gives the team a shared lens. It makes "what do we do next?" answerable. We're focused on acquisition. So we do things that improve acquisition. We're not trying to improve retention and monetization and support at the same time. We're doing one thing. When the goal is explicit, decisions get faster. When the goal is "everything," decisions stall.
The one focus also makes the metric meaningful. When you have one focus, you have one (or few) numbers that matter for it. The team knows what to watch. They know what "good" looks like. They can connect their work to the number. Without one focus, you have a dashboard of numbers and no clear story. With one focus, you have a story: we're trying to do X, and this number tells us if we're doing it.
Stage and risk
Early: acquisition or activation. You need people in the door and people getting to the aha moment. Growth: retention or expansion. You have users; you need them to stay and to grow. Mature: efficiency or new bets. You're optimizing or you're exploring. The focus should address the thing that keeps you up at night. What's the biggest risk? What's the biggest opportunity? The focus should be the answer to one of those questions.
That doesn't mean you ignore everything else. It means you pick one thing for this cycle. You give it two sprints or a quarter. You watch the metric. You ship for it. Then you look at the signal. Is it healthy? Then maybe you rotate to the next bottleneck. Is it still the bottleneck? Then you keep going. The stage and the risk tell you where to start. The signal tells you when to shift.
Picking the metric
The focus has a primary metric. Completion rate for activation. Retention curve for retention. Conversion for paywall. One number, clearly defined. If you can't name the number, you don't have a focus. You have a theme. "We're focused on retention" is a theme. "We're focused on improving week-1 retention for users who completed onboarding" is a focus. The metric is the difference. It's the thing you watch. It's the thing that tells you if you're winning.
The metric should be actionable. When it moves, you know what to do. When it drops, you have a hypothesis. When it rises, you have a reason. If the metric can move and you still don't know what to do next, pick a different metric. The best metrics are boring and specific. They point to a place in the product or a moment in the journey. They're the kind of number that changes how you build. Pick that one. Define it. Put it in front of the team every week.
When to rotate
When the metric is healthy for two sprints, or when something else becomes the bottleneck. Don't rotate on a whim. Rotate on signal. If you've been focused on acquisition and the acquisition metric is solid, look at the next bottleneck. Is it activation? Retention? Paywall? The data will tell you. The product journal will tell you what you shipped. The metrics will tell you what moved. Use that to decide the next focus.
Rotation is part of the discipline. You don't pick one focus forever. You pick one focus for this cycle. You run the loop. You watch the number. You ship. You learn. When the signal says it's time to shift, you shift. The team gets used to it. The rhythm becomes: focus, watch, ship, learn, rotate. That's how you make "one focus" work over time. Not by picking once. By picking again and again, based on evidence.
