It’s almost as certain as the laws of physics that, in the future, you’ll have to improve your results using fewer resources than you do today. What does that specifically demand of you? It demands that you get even better at prioritising your focus — and that isn’t easy, especially not when we’re so easily distracted.
4 distractions that pull the team’s focus away from the result:
Distraction 1: too many balls
I’ve yet to come across a team that only had one result to focus on. The vast majority of teams find they have too many balls in the air. There’s no doubt all your goals are important, but if all goals are equally important, it also means none of them are. A team’s focus will always be a limited resource. The more balls you have to juggle, the less attention each one gets. That means uncertainty arises more often about how the balls should be prioritised against one another. Some balls come from outside, some from management, and some are dreamt up by the team itself. Whatever the case, you should list your various goals together and prioritise them by importance. It can be a tough exercise, but it’s also absolutely decisive for your future results.
Distraction 2: me, me, me (the Facebook syndrome)
Your self-interest makes you easy prey for distraction (R. Ratner, 1999) — or what I also call the Facebook syndrome. We have a natural tendency to look after our own needs before other people’s. If that becomes a trend in your team, self-interest spreads like an epidemic. It erodes the foundation of your teamwork until trust is completely gone and dissolved. “What about me?” is a question every team member naturally asks themselves. If your self-interest is strong, you’ll typically run into a lot of urgent tasks. That’s because it’s an easy way to get your tasks prioritised if you’re a little impatient. If you want to reduce the number of urgent tasks, you have to confront the colleague who brings an urgent task with the question of whether it really should push aside another important task. Anything that stands in the way of focusing on the result should be raised and discussed openly and honestly — even if it’s uncomfortable for the colleague you’re confronting.
There’s no doubt all your goals are important,
but if all goals are equally important, it also means none of them are.
Distraction 3: urgent tasks
A culture where the team struggles to simplify its tasks and cut away the unnecessary ones typically comes from the team struggling to prioritise between tasks that are important and tasks that are urgent (G. Mark, 2008). The difference between the two is that we react to tasks that are urgent, and we act on tasks that are important. When you act, you do something, and when you react, you do something again. That is, a reaction is a consequence of another action. You act, for example, when you take an initiative, and you react when you reply to an email.
A team that’s busy with an important task will find it far easier to handle the pressure than teams with too many urgent tasks. In practice, there will always be tasks that are urgent and need to be done. If the house is on fire, getting out is urgent. But there can also be tasks the team treats as urgent without them actually being so. Teams with too many urgent tasks will typically have a very high stress level. The opposite is teams that only react to urgent tasks. Urgent tasks pull focus away from otherwise more important tasks. I’ve interviewed many leaders who have very successfully gained control over urgent tasks. They’ve done it by prioritising them with the colours red, amber and green. Red when the building’s on fire and everyone has to get out, amber when the task can wait a couple of days, and green when the task can be done next week.
A culture where the team struggles to simplify its tasks
and cut away the unnecessary ones typically comes from the team struggling
to prioritise between tasks that are important and tasks that are urgent.
Distraction 4: a lack of clarity in the goal, mission or vision
A goal, a mission and a vision will usually be clearer to the person who formulated them. Conversely, they’ll usually be less clear to everyone else. An effective way to test whether a goal, a mission and a vision are clear is to ask others how they interpret them. The slightest difference in how they’re perceived equals a lack of clarity (S. Pandey, 2006). It’s a myth that the whole organisation has to be part of formulating the company’s vision, mission and goals. An organisation can perfectly well get behind something it didn’t formulate itself, but it’s a good idea to ask employees for their views. The most important thing is that they feel heard and listened to — but that doesn’t mean they also have to get their way in order to commit.
As a team member, you show ownership by asking if you’re unsure how the goal should be interpreted. Conversely, you don’t show ownership by assuming someone else probably understands it. Bear in mind that when you’re in doubt, others on the team also benefit from getting their interpretation of your goal, mission and vision synchronised.
Energy is released when the team simplifies
Both as a team and as a team member, it’s easy to lose focus and get distracted. Distraction is in fact a field of research when it comes to teams working in high-risk industries such as nuclear power, the oil industry and aviation.
The team avoids distraction by simplifying and cutting away. If we cut everything away, teamwork in the team is about creating results — not about motivated, happy team members. Motivated, happy people are a subset of the result, but it must never become the team’s ultimate focus.
If we cut everything away, teamwork in the team is about creating results — not about motivated, happy team members. Motivated, happy people are a subset of the result, but it must never become the team’s ultimate focus.
I’ve talked to many teams that wanted more happiness at work and more energy in their everyday life. When I asked why, and what they would use it for, they often confused happiness at work and energy with the team’s ultimate goal. More happiness at work and energy thereby become the goal itself, rather than the consequence of teamwork. It’s like the saying “The operation was a success, but the patient died” — an analogy for losing focus on what matters.
Ask a football team why it needs more energy, and it’ll answer: “So we can score more goals.” Ask the team why it needs to be a team, and it’ll answer: “To score more goals.” The team has a scoreboard, so it always knows how it’s doing. It’s perfectly clear to the players whether they should focus on teamwork, happiness at work or motivation. Everything the players do has to make sense in relation to the scoreboard. Otherwise it doesn’t get prioritised.
When a team sees why it gets distracted, it becomes better at prioritising its tasks and cutting away the unnecessary ones. That creates clarity — and clarity gives the team more energy and more courage for the future.
Sources and more inspiration
The Norm of Self-Interest and Its Effects on Social Action
R. Ratner & D. Miller, 1999, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress
G. Mark, D. Gudith & U. Klocke, 2008, The ACM Digital Library
Connecting the Dots in Public Management
S. Pandey & B. Wright, 2006, The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
