The current economy may have already forced you to make difficult decisions about your startup's structure. If it hasn't, you owe it to your company to ensure it's right-sized for the slowed spending and capital investment environment.

While that may sound harsh, remember, being pragmatic now by cutting costs may be necessary to preserve the majority of your work force in the future. Although such actions are difficult and can present negative short-term impacts on a company, a positive result can come from such change - if you're not already highly focused, you should force yourself to become hyper-focused on the right opportunity now.

Ultimately, start-ups should focus on one thing and do it well. For each company, the decision where to focus will be determined by individualized assessments of the competition, market opportunity and product viability. Given such wide-ranging variables and outcomes, the objective of this article isn't to help you decide where to focus. Rather it's to provide some guidelines to help you focus once that determination is made.

The economy notwithstanding, two prevailing factors apply to start-ups. First, smaller companies have a resource disadvantage compared with larger competitors. Big companies inexorably have more people, money and other tangible resources. Second, business is chaotic - even armed with the best-planned strategy, start-ups will experience daily change and turbulence as they build, sell and support products.

Focus means defining massing resources - such as people, information, and capital - on an opportunity to gain superiority in a given market. It's what helps a start-up counter the two above-listed factors. Focus allows the smaller company to gain advantage relative to its competition - larger companies simply cannot act as quickly or nimbly to respond to market needs. Additionally, focus defines the direction of the company, which will help employees negotiate uncertainty and ambiguity.

There are three important guidelines to follow in focusing your company:

1. SHUFFLE PEOPLE TO MEET OPPORTUNITIES AS THEY ARISE.

Given your limited resources, your organization must be inherently flexible so you can shift people to meet needs.

Ensure people are cross-trained, and move your shining stars to emerging demands.

You will need to promote a mindset of flexibility throughout your organization. This starts with hiring adaptable people but includes rewarding people when they demonstrate flexibility, promoting it through everyday language, and making it part of your core values and culture.

2. CRYSTALIZE THE COMPANY'S GOALS.

Communicate openly to ensure all employees understand your intent, doing so in anticipation of shifts so that your company can be best prepared for them. Knowing the company objectives and understanding how one fits into the big picture allow employees to independently apply their talents and creativity to solve problems. It also helps with alignment. For example, when you go into a meeting, there's no ambiguity or need for re-orientation to the topic at hand.

3. MANAGE DOWNSIDE RISK.

Shifting resources frequently may leave other areas of the company weakened. Ensure that no weakness is so extreme that it poses an unacceptable risk. Further, shifting can hurt overall cohesion. Constantly appraise morale and ensure your managers spend upfront time with people when change occurs. It's important to proactively communicate the reasons for change and not just the change itself. Lastly, understand that a role shift can result in short-term decreases in productivity in most people. Work hard to reassure employees that this is normal and expected.

Focus can be doubly advantageous for a start-up today. Layoffs and restructuring in larger companies are exacerbating their inability to act nimbly and decisively.

Vincent Martino is chief operating officer at Balihoo Inc., a Boise startup that last year launched an online search engine for advertisers. Reach him at vmartino@balihoo.com.

Starting Up is a series published on Thursdays. The columns grew from discussions between the Statesman and local tech and entrepreneurial leaders and are coordinated by Julie Howard, a marketing specialist for the Idaho Department of Commerce. Reach her at julie.howard@commerce.idaho.gov.