Musings at Altitude

I suffer from an inability to focus on more than one thing at once.  For example:

— if I’m reading a message on my email, whether on the laptop or the blackberry, if someone is talking with me I hear very few if any of the words that are spoken and if they then need an answer when they are done talking, I’m in big trouble

— if I’m on a conference call and push “mute”, and then in addition to listening to that call also begin working on a slide deck or catching up on other work, inevitably, when someone on the call then asks, “what do you think?”, I’m stumped because I have no clue what they’ve been talking about

— if I’m walking and typing on the blackberry, I eventually have to stop because I can’t watch where I’m going and type at the same time

— if I’m working intensely on something – anything – and I’m interrupted by something more important, when I return to what I was working on, I can’t just pick up where I left off, I have to get back into the mental frame of mind I was in at the time of the interruption in order to pick up at that same spot

We’ve heard the term “multi-tasking” a lot in the last decade.  I’m proud to admit that my kids can typically move in and out of conversations and shift their focus between multiple things instantaneously without losing a moment of interconnectiveness.  But I can’t do that.  The minute I shift, focus is lost.  And to regain focus, it takes time to re-establish my mental state at the time that the original connection was lost.

In times of aggressive change and intense emotional connection, an inability to multi-task can be both a blessing and a curse.  It’s a blessing if my attention and focus is on the highest priority issue at any given time.  If I’m talking with individuals that have the greatest anxiety and I’m focused solely on them at the time and helping them overcome that anxiety, then that’s a good thing.  If I’m working on the communications that difuses the most volatile issues within any transformation process, then that’s a good thing to.  If I remember to prioritize and keep faith and family at the top of my list while still undergoing intense stress at work, then being a single-task guy can be a good thing.

But in today’s world, the issues come at a pace and from angles that don’t reward single-task people.  That’s where the curse comes in if you, like me, can only focus on one thing at a time.  In any given day, change leaders are faced with a multitude of issues all hitting at one time – people issues, organizational coordination issues, other business issues not related to the change at all, personal issues, political issues, economic issues, etc.  For single task people like me, each issue has to be addressed, but typically in a very serial fashion – one at a time – and so much time can be lost in shifting from issue to issue.  On the worst days with the greatest disparity in issues, it’s easy to feel completely overwhelmed, and unfortunately, change by definition fuels the business quicksand you can easily feel like you’re in.  Thus the curse of being a single task guy in a multi task world.

In this perfect storm of business unrest (ecomonic challenge, political challenge, and competitive challenge), I’ve found some simple things that I do to allow my single-task mind to nimbly shift focus in this multi-task world:

(1) As often as possible, meet in someone else’s office and while walking to that office, use those precious few moments to become completely attentive to the individual and the issue that is being addressed; if I walk into that meeting reading emails on my blackberry, something that I read will occupy my mind throughout that whole meeting

(2) Schedule 15 minutes between meetings to allow for that “blackberry check”, but while in the meeting, don’t look at the blackberry and don’t allow interruptions; single-task people can be easily distracted by any single email and thus completely lose focus on what’s being said by the most important person at the time which is whoever I am meeting with

(3) Chunk the day as much as possible and get meetings with similar issues as close as possible to each other; anything that can be done to use schedule as an advantage for focus is a really good thing

(4) Have trusted friends and advisors that you can share with and vent on at any time during the day when the issues become overwhelming – which they will - and trust them to calm you down and get you focused back on the most important issues at hand

(5) Share the burden of change with your team members and resist the constantly creeping feeling that you’re in this alone and the weight of the entire organization is solely on your shoulders; in sharing the burden, share the responsibility for issue management and problem resolution with the team

(6) Find something that makes you smile all the time and then use that something to bring those smiles all the time; for me, it’s typically faith and family that brings smiles - and you’ve seen lots of my reasons for smiles in the pictures in past postings; here’s another one – nothing like a granddaughter that shares the passion for blogging:

Nothing truly prepares you for the intensity of issues in a change process.  For those of us blessed and cursed with an inability to multi-task, that intensity can quickly become overwhelming.  Fortunately, I’ve been able to find moments of peace amidst the insanity by finding those precious moments of “shift time” that allow me to unwind from one issue and build up for the next.