As a senior leader, your time is at a premium and all kinds of people are vying for your attention. Your office is likely deluged with mail, calls, email and all other forms of modern communication from employees, direct staff, suppliers, customers, sales representatives, shareholders, family members, etc. It has been estimated we receive thousands of messages a day! You may have wondered, “Do I have attention deficit disorder?”
With all the advances in technology, the opportunity for us to be interrupted, distracted and taken off focus has never been greater. Technology has made access to us as senior leaders much easier, unless you have controls in place to minimize your accessibility and focus your attention. Email spam is likely at an all-time high. Perhaps you have seen the introduction of “interruption marketing” – those ads appearing on the top and right side of a Google search. Technology has helped, yet also hurt, our ability to focus.
We are also becoming more accessible to our employees and others, which is a good thing; however, as you know, too much of a good thing can be too much.
Think about this: All the stakeholders who are vying for your attention know where the buck stops – if anyone can make a decision or make something happen, it’s you. If you believe you might have senior executive ADD, relax, because you probably don’t. Yet, how can you tell if you are being pulled in more directions than you thought were possible? See if any of these sound familiar to you:
-Do you enjoy getting people all excited about exploring new ideas or strategies to move your organization forward?
-Are you naturally curious and enjoy hearing about new ideas from mentors, advisors, employees or industry experts?
-Do you enjoy helping your staff overcome obstacles, solve problems or decide for them the next steps to take in moving some critical priority along?
-Do you sometimes feel a little overwhelmed by your major priorities list?
-Do you end the day saying something like, “Wow, today was really busy, but I am not sure I got very much accomplished”?
Assuming you have nodded your head at least once, what can you do? The first step is to become aware of the issue, which you have now begun. Making some basic and fundamental operating changes to ensure you are focused on great and impactful initiatives and are not overtaken by the distractions and interruptions will help.
Strategies and tools
1. Focus on your organization’s top three to five priorities to accomplish your annual operating plan. Most successful companies have a maximum of five key priorities. Having much more than five really indicates you have no priorities. Once those are clear, examine how you spend your day. The most successful executives spend at least 50 percent of their day on moving key priorities along in some way.
2. Start your day the night before – and, no, I don’t mean add more hours to the day. Before you leave each night, plan out on paper exactly how you will spend the next day taking into account meetings, research, phone calls, thinking time, etc., to move the key priorities along. If you need to allow an hour or so to be available for addressing some unique or crisis situation, you can plan it. Stick to this plan and rate yourself at the end of each day and week.
3. Learn to say “no,” and say it much more frequently than you say “yes.” The most successful CEOs say no 50 to 100 times more than they say yes. This helps them and the organization maintain focus on the three to five key priorities.
4. Enlist the help and support of your executive assistant (EA) to help you stay focused. Give up control of your calendar to your EA – this strategy alone will save you hundreds of hours each year in distractions, interruptions and unproductive meetings. That may be a scary proposition, but trust me, you will wonder why you hadn’t done so earlier.
If you really want a different outcome, change has to happen, and that change must begin with you. Will it be hard or uncomfortable? Absolutely. However, think of the impact you will have on the organization as you embrace these changes and put them to good use.
