Category Archives: Focus

We Love Our Distractions

I am sitting here writing this Blog, with the TV on, with a
football game being played. I don’t know who is playing, New York I think. I don’t really care. I’m writing
a Blog. At least I am trying to write a Blog. In the next room my wife has the
stereo on (utilizing Pandora – Michael Buble…I think…). I’m still trying to
write a Blog. I could probably turn off the TV and close the door and get more
focused on the task at hand, but that would mean that I would have to fully
focus on what I am doing. I don’t know if I can do that anymore.


I think back to when I am in the office and wonder if it
would be any easier to do this there. But then I think of how often my phone
rings. I always have to answer it. I don’t know why. I immediately prioritize
the ringing phone above almost anything else I am doing at the moment. I get
very, very few calls that are ever worth the interruption, but when I ever do, I
am usually answering them by the first ring.


I also think about my Instant Messaging. That seems to be
going off all the time. Everybody must feel that they must be using it these days. It makes me
wonder what we did before we had it. I can’t remember ever getting any  important information or messages via IM, but my hope springs eternal in that I will, so I always stop what I am
doing to see what someone else wants on IM.


I also have a door on my office, but I seldom close it. It
has a glass window in it so people can look in and see if I am there anyway.
People have a tendency to stop by and just come in to talk to me. It doesn’t
seem to matter to them what I am doing. They just walk in. Sometimes they
actually bring work with them, as if it is work that is more important than the
work I was already doing. Sometimes they just bring their coffee cup, which is
obviously more important than whatever I was doing before.


We won’t discuss email at this point. We all have
acquired an email habit / addiction that requires a “fix” at least every 5-10 minutes
lest some critical spam-like solicitation sit idle in our mailbox beyond its
freshness born-on date and we miss it. Have you ever been in someone’s office
when they start reading and responding to their email?


Not seeing someone feeding their email habit would be like
going to lunch with people and not seeing them texting or remotely reading
their email on their smart-phone. You would have a better chance of seeing the
tooth fairy than seeing people neglect their smart-phones for a full lunch hour.
Besides, messing with our smart-phones provides us the opportunity to show
everyone that we are with just how important we are and how crucial our input
is to the well being of the business.


Are you seeing a trend here? We all seem to love our
distractions. If we didn’t, we might take a few steps to reduce them, and focus
more on what we need to be doing. I am just as guilty of it as everyone else,
but I am trying to take a few steps to improve how I cope with the situation.


I have read that we become “dumber” when we multitask. The
average IQ of a man drops about 15 points when we multitask. I actually
believe this one. It means that senior management must multitask far more than
anyone else in the company had even suspected. It also means to me that when it is time to get
something done it is also time to turn off the IM, shut down the email and
close the door to the office. I admit that you can’t disconnect from the world
for extended periods of time, but the world can definitely get along without us
for an hour or two while we focus on getting something done.


I think it is also time to reintroduce the telephone to the
conversation. IM and email are not the media to use for conversations. If you
have to reply more than twice to an electronic message, it probably means that
the phone would be a better faster way to communicate. Use it once and get
done, instead of innumerable electronic messages of one type or another that scream
for our attention and distract us from what needs to be done.


We are goal oriented people for the most part. We like to
work, and then see the results of our labor. I think my wife likes to mow the
yard because she can see how good it looks when she is done. Many of my
neighbors have asked me how I convinced her of this idea, but I digress a
little here. The idea is to set smaller attainable tasks that can be handled
within manageable time periods. This way tasks can be accomplished in manageable
segments which reduce the opportunity for distraction and interruption.


These are just a few of the ideas that I think I will need
to implement in an effort to regain control of my day, and to get better
focused on the tasks I need to get done. They may work for you too. You may
have some other ideas and suggestions as well. The idea is that we all probably
could stand to reduce the number of distractions that we have to deal with as
we try to conduct or business.


By the way, the football game is still on, and I still am
not sure of the score, or who is playing, and the stereo is now playing
rock-n-roll Christmas songs…..

“When Growth Stalls”


I recently had the opportunity to listen to Steve McKee, the author of the book “When Growth Stalls” speak at a conference. He studied the phenomenon of how some small companies on a very good growth trajectory seemed to stall out and plateau as they became medium sized and larger companies. I think the 4 basic topics that he covered are applicable across the market in general today, not just for smaller growing companies.

 

1.      Lack of Alignment: Steve spoke about the fact that as management teams grew with the company, their alignment tended to vary more. I think that this is the case today with various issues such as when “revenue growth at all costs” groups do battle with “profitability at all costs” groups within company leadership teams. It is easy to say you want both, but it is a very precarious balancing act to try and implement.

 

2.      Loss of Focus: Similar to lack of alignment, loss of focus deals with a decline in the passion and commitment to success that drove the company’s earlier success.  It seems to have become a “job”, not an avocation or career. Good enough has in fact become good enough.

 

3.      Loss of Nerve: When issues arise it now seems that the first (and sometimes only approach) is to scale back. We now scale back on R&D investment. We scale back on Marketing. We scale back on what we need for future success. It is here that he asked the best question I have heard in a long time:

 

“What do we need to do to remember that this economic crisis is a gift?”

 

Or in other words, what can we do with respect to our relative positioning to our competitors in the market to be more successful than them. Times of instability can be times of market opportunity if properly approached.

 

We seemed to have forgotten this concept across the board in the market lately.

 

4.      Finally he spoke about business and marketing inconsistency and how “stuck” companies seem to change these items more / too quickly. As every business struggles to move forward they continue to try “new” things. New organizational structures. New marketing campaigns. What they fail to notice is that change also starts everything over. You must give each new structure or campaign time to be successful. It is a failure to stay with a bad structure or campaign too long, but it is also a failure to not give them enough time to be successful.

 

Steve McKee struck a chord with me and I will try to use and apply some of the comments and approaches he mentioned. Hopefully we will all be able to get the system“unstuck”, and moving forward in a more healthy market in the near future.

Activity and Progress

Lulls happen in business. It is very rare that there is a prolonged period of non-stop functional engagement. Holidays, vacations, general economic and market changes occur so that sometimes there is just not as much business to conduct as there is at other times.




It is normally at times like these that management comes by to see what you are up to. We’ll talk about this in another article.




What we will talk about here is the difference between doing something and making progress. Remember how your mom would always think of something for you to do if she found you relaxing or watching TV. That was activity. The management equivalent can be the number of reports, plans and strategies that you will be asked for as a result of any changes to the general business, market or economic conditions that may arise.




Progress for your mom was you moving from elementary, to middle, to high school and beyond. Sure there were report cards every quarter, or semester, but the overall progress toward the goal and objective of graduation had a significantly different and longer time line. The current management equivalent for progress is not so easily quantified. We seem to be in a quarter (3 month) over quarter cycle where year to year changes have lost their importance.




The key is to realize that progress takes time. Activity can be immediate, but can the advancements it generates be sustained? Perhaps, but we seem to have become very focused on immediate responses and gratifications. We need to understand that activity is immediate and short term, and to also understand that there may be quarters where the activity may not put us at the levels that we want. We need to keep our focus on the longer term goals and objectives if we are going to really make progress.

How Resolute are You?

In every assignment you will see that there are things that will need to be changed. They can be large or small items, but you will want them done your way. The issue will arise from the fact that they are not currently being done your way. They are being done some other way. Further complicating the issue is that the people currently performing these tasks in some other way than your way are comfortable and capable of doing them that way.


 


Now if you were able to follow all that you are doing well.


 


The point here is that any change that you may want to make to your business will be met with a built in resistance from within the organization itself. People may understand that what they are currently doing may not be the optimal or even correct course of action, but it is something that they know how to do. When you ask them to do something else that they may not have done before, you will meet up with resistance. You will be asking them to leave their current comfort zone.


 


The greater the change that you want the greater and more widespread will be the resistance to it. The success of proposed change will be directly proportionate to how resolute you are. It may actually come down to your force of will. If you show a willingness to accept anything short of the new level of performance that you want, then that is what you will get. The closer people can stay to the status quo, the closer they can stay to their current comfort zone.


 

Resolute leaders make the changes they want. They don’t accept anything less. Resolute businesses get changed only incrementally, if at all. They have a built in impedance and resistance to change. How resolute you are, when it comes to changing the way your business runs will have a greater impact than the type of changes you decide to make.

Take the Initiative

“If I can just make it through this busy time, I will be able to take a break…” At one time or another we have all either thought it or said it. It is what helped us get through a particular period of increased activity. It was the light at the end of the tunnel…so to speak.


I think what most of us missed in this scenario was that our work load was not increasing above its normal level. It was returning to its proper level.


There are always lulls in the business process. We tend to miss them as they don’t occur all at once. Gradually we find that we have more time to get things done, or drink our coffee, or any number of other diversions. With a little honest self examination you will know if you are working fully up to your potential.


It is at these times when you should take the initiative.


There are always important and significant customers that could use another “touch”. There are always budgets that could use another review, presentations that need to be updated and strategies that need to be revised. There are always things that we wanted to do to improve the business, or at least our portion of it.

In short, don’t relax. Don’t get busy. Get to work.


It’s hard to believe but it will invigorate both you and the team. It helps you maintain the “Act, don’t React” approach to business. Don’t wait for something to happen to drive your activity. Look to drive your activity in order to make something happen. It is not some trite platitude. It will actually work. It might sound a little odd, but taking the initiative to do more during a slower time will help keep the team more focused, and the business will run better.