In opening his testimony, Schmidt alluded to Microsoft, saying “twenty years ago, a large technology firm was setting the world on fire. Its software was

on nearly every computer. Its name was synonymous with innovation.

“But that company lost sight of what mattered. Then Washington stepped in.

It’s an interesting and probably accurate perspective given how Microsoft has effectively lost its way for the last decade – although given Google’s urge to become an identity service and its buying a mobile phone manufacturer doesn’t auger well for their focus on the core search business.

Losing of focus of what matters is a problem for all business owners. We’re busy, it’s hard winning orders, getting paid and keeping customers happy so we lose track of the reason we went into business.

For most of us it was because we had a great business idea or a belief we could have a better life being our own bosses.

That latter objective is often the first one lost, usually we find ourselves working harder, taking fewer holidays and seeing the family less than if we’d stayed in a comparatively safe job with BigCorp.

Great ideas can also be our undoing – if you’re constantly having brainwaves, you find you have lots of ideas but no time to execute on any of them.

Similarly, one great idea that turns out to be dog can be bad news as well. Often, we’re loath to admit we’re wrong and hold onto a failing business idea long after it’s shown not to be viable.

Probably worst of all is when we violate our own values; many of us went into business because we didn’t like the values of the corporation we worked for.

Then one day we find we’re screwing subcontractors, that we’re leasing an expensive car the business can’t afford while cutting staff benefits and we’re tying up customers in legalistic contracts in attempt not to deliver the services we promised.

Just like the big company we swore we’d never become.

If you’re a big company with a lucrative business niche – like Google or Microsoft – you can get along quite nicely with the rivers of gold flowing subsidising your indulgences and distractions, most of though we don’t have that revenue buffer protecting our assets.

The cost of losing focus is a killer; even if it doesn’t kill our businesses, it will destroy our souls.

Are you keeping focus on why you went into business?

A Sydney advertising agency faking a story about a woman looking for the owner of a jacket is a good example of how forgetting this can backfire. 

For Naked Communications this is particularly ironic given the headline Naked tells the Naked Truth at the time of their corporate takeover last year.

An even greater lesson is the damage done to the fantastic “Best Job in the World” campaign with another lame stunt. It’s fairly safe to say overdoing things with a fake tattoo has destroyed much of this story’s goodwill which is a crying shame.

There’s a temptation to dress this up as a new media versus old media story, but it’s not. Ethics have always been ethics and truth has always been the truth.

Regardless of who you are and what your business is, integrity is everything.