The leadership secret they don’t want you to know—How to win in 2026
In the whirlwind of 2026’s business landscape, the real leadership secret that sets high achievers apart is deceptively simple: maintaining laser focus on the top three to five priorities that truly move the needle. While the rest of the world is caught up in distractions, leaders like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs have always excelled by cutting through the noise.
We’ll dive into how you can adopt this “signal versus noise” mentality, develop your own tunnel vision on what matters most and truly thrive. By the end, you’ll understand why this is the core leadership secret that will help you win in 2026 and beyond.
Signal versus noise: Focusing on the crucial few
In the grand tapestry of leadership, one timeless secret separates the extraordinary from the merely competent: the ability to distinguish signal from noise. And that begins with asking yourself, every single day, what are the top three to five priorities that absolutely must get done in the next 24 hours. Inside that short list, you also need a hierarchy: if nothing else got done, what is the single most crucial task that will move you closer to your ultimate goal?
This is how leaders like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and even the Google founders, Larry and Sergey, operate. They are masters of saying no to the noise. They’re not afraid to disappoint people or skip unnecessary meetings because they know that distractions dilute their impact. Sometimes, it’s about having a near-maniacal focus on just one thing that must get done, shutting out everything else until it’s complete. That’s the heart of the signal-versus-noise mentality.
On a larger scale, you should also set your top three to five priorities for the year. But remember, most people lose sight of those yearly goals because they fail to break them down into daily must-dos. The real magic is in the extreme short-term focus—knowing precisely what must happen in the next 24 hours to keep your trajectory sharp and your progress unstoppable.
Easy distractions: The silent saboteur of focus
In today’s world, distractions are an ever-escalating battle and the smartphone is the most powerful attention-thief ever invented. While everyone’s heard it before, few truly realize just how much their attention span has withered away. Even the wealthiest business owners I work with—ultrahigh-net worth individuals—often don’t notice how fragmented their focus has become.
Take one of my former clients in Asia, for example. He always had two phones on his desk and would check them incessantly—even while my team and I were presenting our latest successes in future-proofing his businesses, optimizing them for growth and profitability. The moment he picked up his phone, we knew to pause—because any crucial insight would be lost in that instant. This scenario is all too common, and if top business leaders aren’t careful, they’ll find their focus similarly eroded.
What we do at the Tom Oliver Group is help leaders reclaim that focus. We know that entire industries are designed to pull attention away and it’s only getting worse as algorithms become more sophisticated. That’s why we guide our clients to consciously push back, extend their attention spans and maintain a laser focus on what truly matters.
In short, it’s not just about knowing distractions exist—it’s about taking deliberate action against them, something we help our clients achieve every day.
Your Top 3 to 5: Mastering the art of ruthless prioritization
When it comes to maintaining a laser-like focus, the magic number is your top three to five priorities. Whether you call them your “Big Five,” your “Three to Thrive” or your core focus list, the idea is the same: you need a clear, concise set of top priorities for the year. From there, you can break it down by quarter, by month, by week and even by day.
For some businesses, that might sound like too much segmentation. For others, it might not be enough. But the most successful high-growth startups in the world—and giants like Google—still do this rigorously. They set and review their top three to five priorities on a weekly basis, constantly evaluating progress. Anything more than five priorities is a recipe for distraction and anything less frequent than weekly measurement can lead to a loss of focus.
I’ve seen this firsthand with a client who initially only measured progress twice a year. They’d set far too many goals in their annual strategic planning sessions and then only revisit them every six months.
Naturally, this led to a scattered focus and missed opportunities. By shifting to a shorter cycle, identifying a top three to five every week—they gained the same kind of maniacal urgency and focus that leaders like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have always championed. In other words, this disciplined focus on a small set of key priorities isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a fundamental leadership secret for building business empires.
The big business’ challenge and the speed advantage of focus
One major disadvantage I’ve witnessed firsthand is that as businesses grow into large conglomerates, they naturally accumulate complexity and inertia. It’s easy for them to lose that sharp focus and become sluggish. They have so many moving parts, so many goals, that the top three to five priorities get lost. The result is a loss of speed and agility. In today’s fast-paced world, especially with technology and artificial intelligence evolving rapidly, that lack of focus can be a company’s downfall.
This is precisely why nimble startups, with a laser-like focus on a few key priorities, often outpace and even dethrone these older, established giants. Despite having more resources, big incumbents can become slow and lethargic. Meanwhile, a smaller player that maintains a relentless focus on its top priorities can move faster, adapt quicker and ultimately surpass the bigger, slower competition.
So if you’re leading a large business or conglomerate, the lesson is clear: never let go of that top three to five focus. It’s the secret to staying agile and keeping your business running at full potential, even as you grow.
Tunnel vision: The blinders of the ultrahigh achievers
One of the defining secrets of the world’s top achievers—whether in business, the arts or sports—is what I like to call tunnel vision. It’s that reality-bending willfulness to zero in on a single objective while shutting out every distraction. Picture a racehorse running with blinders on—the only thing in its field of vision is the finish line. That’s exactly how leaders like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Google founders operate. They put on metaphorical blinders and focus ruthlessly on their top priority.
This tunnel vision isn’t just for the boardroom. I’ve seen artists and world champion athletes apply the same principle to break records and achieve personal bests.
Tom Oliver, a “global management guru” (Bloomberg), is the chair of The Tom Oliver Group, the trusted advisor and counselor to many of the world’s most influential family businesses, medium-sized enterprises, market leaders and global conglomerates. For more information and inquiries: TomOliverGroup.com or email Tom.Oliver@inquirer.com.ph.
