If you know which area of your business needs your attention and when, then you are halfway there. It's also crucial to know when it's time to change

Success in any business is governed by timing, luck, and an ability to get the big decisions right more often than you get them wrong. It does not (as so many failed entrepreneurs mistakenly believe) lie in the pursuit of perfection, but rather in making rare and timely changes to your focus.

Knowing which aspects of your operation need your attention—and just when they need it—is the one business-critical essential. It's so easy to become blinded to a developing cashflow vortex while you're busy redefining your building signage to enhance the customer experience.

Often, it is when a business sticks with what it knows best from its past, but in an environment that has markedly changed, that it comes badly unstuck.

My favourite example of a superb yet imperfect organisation is Ryanair. A better instance of a business that has timed its offer to profitably ride the surf of market sentiment is hard to find. It's a company I admire and is a fantastic case study of how to learn from, import, and develop a successful formula from the US, to turn a mature market on its head through product, price and process innovation, and to stay resolutely focused on a clear proposition—in this case, the cheapest flights.

Of course, it is as imperfect as the rest of us, most notably in its approach to customer service. I've lost count of the people who've told me that they'll never fly Ryanair again, yet the passenger miles and profits just keep on scaling new heights.

Isn't it interesting that such a successful company, depending on the largely similar middle-class, multiple-holidaying, second-home-owning customer base as John Lewis, can seemingly go out of its way to denude its service of any scent of individual customer focus or flexibility?

Being the market leader to the quality classes with the cheapest, least gift-wrapped offer is not a phenomenon I have noticed succeeding elsewhere. Marks & Spencer, BMW and Boden have the service personae of a domestic butler. Budget airlines, by comparison, dress themselves more like traffic wardens. No-frills carriers have dedicated focus on being much cheaper.

They thrive by driving the costs of travel to all-time lows, by creating interest in new destinations, while being just as reliable or even better as traditional carriers. It has worked spectacularly well. Personally, I'm not so sure that the low-cost airline proposition that prevails today—it's cheaper, but you will be herded onto the plane, forced to pay extra to take clean clothes with you, and be required to buy new 15kg bags—would have had the same resonance in the market.

It's a paradox that the saviours of air travel seem now to be casting themselves in the image of the more arrogant incumbents they replaced as market leaders. Some of them seem to be fast becoming airlines that we love to say we hate, but mostly still use, for now.

But their businesses are a success, and there are a few lessons to be learnt from this. The first is not to waste energy trying to be perfect. You can only succeed by concentrating on a few areas, fulfilling them brilliantly, and ignoring the other stuff that your competitors mistakenly see as critical.

Perfection is for pretenders. Second, don't get sidetracked when the inevitable naysayers try rubbishing your business model or approach. Do what it says on your tin and nothing else. Its pretty tough staying as focused as operations such as BMW, which concentrates on developing its core 3, 5 and 7 Series models, dedicating the team to continuous improvements year in, year out. It's not necessary to follow your competition off-piste. Trust your own judgement. And third, when the time does come for a change in strategic direction, as you and your market mature, change. It's a delusion to believe that what worked 20 years ago when you were a brash start-up—before internet chat rooms, comfortable trains and the environmental lobby were invented—is automatically going to work when you become the new establishment.
  
Alex Pratt OBE is founder of seriousreaders.com and an adviser to the government on innovation and skills.