How to keep on course when everything’s fighting for your attention
Watching the U.S. Open earlier this month, I was struck, again and again, by the players’ intense focus, particularly how their eyes followed the ball through their entire shot. Slow down the footage, and you can see their attention doesn’t leave that bright yellow streak until it’s off their racquet.
There’s a lesson here for business, I thought.
Too often, we take our eyes off the proverbial ball. I’ve been doing a lot of strategy work with clients lately, and this is a recurring issue. I keep hearing from leaders how torn their attention feels and how overwhelmed they feel by the many competing priorities coming at them.
In sports, we lift our gaze (I’m notorious for this on the golf course) because our mind has already finished the shot before our club or racket has hit the ball. I think that's what happens on the (often long) path from strategy to goals to execution, too: our brain has finished the shot, and our attention’s gone on to other projects or priorities. I don’t mean this as a criticism: it’s understandable, especially in an age of instant gratification, super-accelerated expectations and complex demands.
But if you can develop the ability and systems to resist the very understandable diversions and detours that assail you daily and engage and align your team with the most critical tasks to get you to your goals, you’ll exponentially increase your odds of achieving them. And, hey, if you’ve strayed from the path from strategy to execution to results, don’t worry. Fall is the perfect time to refocus.
Strategy’s messy middle
Strategy is vital. It gives organizations direction, focus, and a shared vision and goals. And it might also be one of the most misunderstood and mismanaged elements of business.
I’ve written extensively about how the first step, crafting a rigorous strategic thinking session, tends to get the bulk of the attention. And why not? Holding aspirational conversations about a desired future state is inspiring and exciting. With this momentum, the early execution of the work to move toward the goals tends to get off to a hot start.
But then months go by and the gap between strategy, execution and results starts to show. I’ll bet you’ve experienced this. The strategy binder goes on the shelf. Once in a while, you dust it off and go, “Oh, crap! We haven't done any of this stuff!”
That’s a classic case of the strategy to execution to results gap.
Work and life happen, and 101 things are fighting for your attention, dragging your focus away, and, before you know it, you’re off-track. Or maybe you haven't seen much in the way of results, people are getting restless, or you just want to do something else. It’s tempting to lift your head. But that messy middle is precisely the time when it’s most important to stay the course and keep going.
Remember: results take time
In our super-accelerated world, instant gratification has become practically the norm. That affects our expectations for everything, including strategies. We want to have a plan and then have it work, like, tomorrow.
Remember five-year strategic plans? They’re practically unheard of now due to the incredibly brisk rate of change that makes this kind of long-term planning seem old-fashioned. Today, even a three-year plan can seem far-fetched. But of course, some goals need multiple months, quarters, and even years to be realized.
And it’s human nature, I think, to get bored if a goal is too big or too distant. It’s shiny, like a star, but how will you get to that far-off place? I often see a tendency to want to fill the gap between strategy and results… with more strategy! But what’s needed is a little patience and some mechanisms to stay on track, like guardrails on a busy highway.
Set milestones and guideposts
The key to successful execution isn’t a mystery; it’s mostly about maintaining a commitment to the things most likely to get you to your goals. This sounds easy but is very hard to execute due to the competing priorities constantly vying for your time and attention.
Breaking down those big goals into bite-sized pieces can help maintain focus. It’s the classic retort to the question, “How do you eat an elephant?”
Check your processes
The best way to overcome this risk of distraction is by implementing operating mechanisms and developing a structure to adhere to your highest priorities.
I think back on Deming’s total quality management (TQM), a set of management practices to increase quality and productivity, in which 80% of failures come from systems, structures and processes. They are failures of execution. But often, we blame people or even the strategy itself when it doesn’t seem to work.
Check in often
Regular strategy reviews are a vital part of your MO. I can’t stress how important it is to have consistent, frequent times on your schedule, either for meetings or personal thinking time, to assess your strategy, check progress and alignment and make adjustments as needed.
Here at Whitewater, we call this “follow-up, follow-through,” a process of intentional, ongoing communication linked to action, keeping execution on track.
Be flexible
Staying the course when the course isn’t working is foolish. But so is abandoning the ship when you’re not necessarily on the rocks. It’s a bit of a balancing act between staying committed and knowing when to shift. It’s about
staying agile: Be open to adapting strategies when necessary, but avoid chasing every new trend or idea.And make sure you’ve got the right metrics in place to assess how things are going. This data will help guide your course and tell you when it might be time to adjust.
Reconnect with your vision
Sometimes, we need to lift our gaze, just not in the middle of the game. One of the best ways to get out of the weeds is to step back, look at the big picture, and ask (and ask often): What was your original vision for your organization and your strategy? Reinforcing your big “why?” reminds everyone of why these small steps or tasks connect to the overall plan.
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