There is a finite limit to what an individual is able to focus on effectively. Since companies and organizations are made up of individuals, the principle is the same for them. This limit is much less than what is normally accepted. Take the subject of multitasking as an example. There are those that claim they have the ability to multitask or the ability to do (perform/carryout) more than one mental task at a time. Some common examples: Watching television and reading or doing homework; driving and talking on the cell phone and/or putting on makeup; reading and listening to someone talking or the most common; listening and talking. Despite what you might think, you cannot do both of these at exactly the same time. One of the activities suffers at the expense of the other.
It is impossible to carryout two voluntary mental activities at the same time.
I expect that a large number reading that statement vehemently disagree – especially females. I do not want to be perceived as sexist here – there are certainly many men in this camp, but the female gender generally makes the claim that they are somehow gifted with the ability to multitask and so deceive themselves by constantly attempting to do it. The fact is that your mind can switch its focus back and forth between tasks – and do it rapidly, but it cannot focus on two tasks at exactly the same time. Moreover, when one considers him or herself to be multitasking, they are in reality rapidly switching their focus between the two, three or more tasks that they are trying to do. Because of this switching, their productivity and effectiveness is decreased. The reason for this reduced productivity is the continual need to refocus on each task as you switch. When we are interrupted while reading, it takes a few seconds to find our place again – both on the page and mentally – before we can resume reading. Sure, it is only a very brief period of time and in the case of watching TV and reading at the same time - it may only be a fraction of a second for each switch of focus. But any benefit that you may get from either of the activities, (assuming that you were watching a television program that could provide benefit), will be decreased, and it will ultimately take you more time to do both tasks at the same time than it would have to do each separately. Think about this the next time you consider yourself to be multitasking.
If we understand that we can only truly focus on one thing at a time, and agree that an organization made up of people, can only focus on more than one thing, by switching the focus, we realize that there needs to be a limit on that which is put on the priority list. The larger the list of results that an organization is forced to focus on - and the subsequent switching back and forth between them– the less productive and the less effective the organization becomes. The amount of specific results metrics that an organization can focus on depends on the size, ability and experience of that organization and it is relatively easy to determine. What you work on, works – what you stop working on, stops working. If the list of priorities or issues that you expect focus on, grows to the point where some of those issues stop working – you have likely exceeded your organizations threshold.
Copyright 2009: Excerpt from "Consequence of Leadership" by Craig Mostat published by Lulu.com
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