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Tag: Stakeholder

Performance, Attention and Focus

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

The way you and your teams pay attention and focus is crucial to achieving sustained optimal performance.

“A primary task of leadership is to direct attention. To do so, leaders must learn to focus their own attention.”[1] Daniel Goleman

Optimal performance is sustainably achieving goals efficiently and effectively, to your best ability within current conditions.  To perform, individuals, teams, and organizations manage and apply situation specific technical and administrative skills, project, program, and process management, supported by relationship capabilities like communications, conflict management, decision making, and expectations management.

These capabilities rely on attention and a realistic perspective informed by positive values like objectivity and servant leadership. A realistic perspective realizes that change is inevitable and that there is uncertainty because we live and work in a complex system (our environment, organization, etc.) [2]

While attention, perspective, and values are equally important, this article focuses on attention. Let’s look at what we mean by attention, its importance, and what you can do to cultivate it.

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Attention

According to Amisha Jha, a neuroscientist, there are three kinds of attention:

  • Focused attention – directed to a specific object. It is concentration like shining a flashlight on an object, for example, a person in a conversation or work on a task. On an organizational level, focused attention directs resources to a specific project or process.
  • Open attention – seeing or being objectively aware of what is occurring in a broad expanse, mindful awareness. Open attention enables a stepping back from focus to be in touch with what is occurring in and around the object of focus.
  • Executive attention – deciding what within the field of open attention to attend to and what to do about it, regulating responses with awareness and discernment.

Objects of Attention

Objects of attention may be anything – a project, an organization, a task, presentation, thought, sound, physical sensation, or any observable phenomena.

According to Daniel Goleman focused attention has three modes: awareness of self, others, and the wider world. [3]

With self-focus, the primary objects are thoughts, physical sensations, and feelings. With other-focus, the principal objects are other people and things and their behavior.  Focus outward is diffuse open awareness without focusing on any particular object. It is seeing the big picture and disengaging from routine attentiveness to allow for creativity and exploration.

Projects are Objects

A project is an object. It focuses an organization’s attention by dedicating human effort and other resources to create or change a product, putt on an event or make a change of any kind. Effective project stakeholders are aware of the impact their actions have on their environment and the way the environment impacts the project. Executives govern to manage a portfolio of projects, avoid distractions, and choose the most effective places to focus attention.

Projects, tasks, or activities, whether performed by teams or individuals, are objects of attention. A project team focuses on the project. Teams and individuals focus on performing, attentive to the way they perform and interact, aware of what impact they are having on their environment and how their environment is affecting them, their tasks, and projects.

Why Focus Matters

Lose focus and performance suffers. Fail to be attentive to what’s going on in and around you and performance suffers.

Concentration and skillful attention elicit a Flow experience, being in the Zone, a state of optimal performance and deep relaxation.

Consider what happens when sponsors or clients lose interest in a project, they once considered important. Other “interesting” things crop up to grab their attention. Resources start getting pulled away. The project manager is less able to influence some stakeholders to fulfill commitments. Performance suffers. The same kind of thing happens when you as an individual are distracted. Performance suffers.

The more undistracted the focus the greater the quality of performance. According to Cal Newport:

“Decades of research from both psychology and neuroscience underscore that undistracted concentration is required to learn complicated information efficiently.”

“Focus also produces better results. Recent research on the attention residue effect,  for example, reveals that when you switch your attention from one target to another, there’s a residue left behind from the first target that reduces your cognitive performance for a while before fading. In other words, if you quickly check your phone or e-mail inbox, your brain will operate more slowly for the next 15 to 30 minutes.” [4]

Fatigue and Distractions Get in the Way

Attention is a natural capacity that varies in strength depending on one’s energy level and powers of concentration.

The tired mind easily slips away from objects of focus and lacks the strength to bring focus back to the object. Open attention and executive function suffer because the mind is too easily drawn to the many distractions that call to it and it is too weak to return to awareness.

It may seem relaxing to just go with the mental stream of thoughts, feelings, and external distractions. However, when you regularly allow yourself to flit from one thing to another as they randomly appear, you weaken your concentrative powers.

Improve Your Attention

Three things enhance all the aspects of attention – focus, open awareness, and executive function:

  1. Strong concentration, mindfulness, and objectivity aided by minimizing distractions and managing the ones that cannot be avoided
  2. A process and systems view that recognizes the realities of interdependence, cause and effect relationships, and continuous change
  3. Values upon which to base skillful decision making.

Exercise Your Mind

Let the practice of consciously managing distractions seep into day to day, moment to moment experience. When you notice that your focus has slipped away, make the effort to bring it back. The more you bring your mind back to a chosen object of focus, the more you strengthen your power of concentration.

There are many exercises to strengthen your power of concentration. One is to take a few minutes a day to sit quietly and count your out-breaths from one to ten. If you lose count (it is quite normal if you do), don’t beat yourself up for it. just start from one again. Don’t worry if your thoughts stream like a waterfall. Persist and the concentration will calm the mind.

Cultivate relaxed concentration. Distractions will come. Congratulate yourself for noticing and going back to the counting or whatever your object of focus is. No need to strain or over think it. Your open attention notices distraction and your executive function brings you back or lets the mind wander.

Mindfulness meditation is a highly effective means for honing your focused attention, open minded observation, and executive attention. See www.Self-AwareLiving,com for exercises and information on how to integrate meditation, and systems and process thinking into your life.

[1] https://hbr.org/2013/12/the-focused-leader

[2] For more on perspective see “Putting the Power of Process Thinking into Action“[2]  and Vision And Systems View To Improve Performance[2].  For more on values and decision making see “Making Effective Decisions: What Is The Truth And How Important Is It?“[2]

[3] https://hbr.org/2013/12/the-focused-leader

[4] {https://time.com/4166333/focus-is-the-new-iq/https://time.com/4166333/focus-is-the-new-iq/}

User experiences, Customer Journeys, Change Management and everything in between: The Common Element of Human Factors

Written by Priyanka Agrawal on . Posted in Articles.

There is a lot of conversation happening these days about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine learning, and Robotics. Artificial intelligence or AI is the ability of a system to understand what it is being asked of and then infer the best possible answer from all the available evidences. These trendy buzzwords, AI, robotics, machine learning, etc. may sound fascinating. However, they pose a serious and real threat – the threat to potentially alienate users and their experiences leading to trust issues and therefore abandoning adoption.

In one of my co-authored papers 14 years ago, at the Rigi Research group at the University of Victoria, we had proposed that humans should be treated as modeled, managed elements in an autonomic control loop to deter user alienation, improve user experiences and build user trust. We suggested synergistic design ideas to make communication with users more effective, and to allow the system to learn from the users’ actions. A system that exhibits initiative and interaction, creates a dialogue with humans and engages the people side of things is hence likely to be better adopted.

Fast forward to today, I am elated to see that our research aligned exactly with what is being asked of in today’s world. No wonder then our paper received 5,939 citations. Be it an enterprise-wide transformation or localized self-service web application, the human factor is of utmost importance. Today everything lies, not only around but also, within human experiences. As Digital-Media puts it, there can be no transformation without the human touch. Circumscribing digital transformation to the technological area is a grave error because change must be driven by the will, capacity, and commitment of people, in an organization where different generations coalesce.

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Social media frameworks today have spread contagiously and seen unprecedented success. These social media platforms such as Instagram®, Facebook®, and Snapchat® were built with a focus on people and their experiences. No, I am not suggesting to build or buy social networking tools but the point I am trying to make is that these applications were instantly intuitive and appealed to their users. Nobody needs formal training for Instagram. The same expectation of instinctive usability has to be part of any transformation initiative. In other words, User Experiences, Customer Journey and Change Management is not just about graphical user interfaces—it’s about interactions, collaborations, value mapping, and adoption. Therefore, while human factors determine the success of digital transformations, those same human factors must guide transformative actions in a smooth, efficient process for making the shift to the new digital environment. For example, analyzing available raw data made through a “Human” prism provides the ability for decision making. Without a human dimension, data is just a massive occupier of storage space that adds more problems than it solves.

As digital continues to penetrate our lives and transform our world at an accelerated pace, it will also expand the ways in which it permeates every aspect of our everyday lives. Giving heed to Human Factors, today and in the future, is therefore, fundamentally required to transform digital from a distinct, disconnected field into something that’s embedded in the fabric of everyday businesses. By ensuring people are at the center of any change, organizations can ensure they are on a path to success so that it can adjust naturally to the rapid tempo of future transformations that are yet to come.

Do Difficult Stakeholders Really Exist?

Written by Christina Lovelock on . Posted in Articles. 14 Comments on Do Difficult Stakeholders Really Exist?

We hear and use the term ‘difficult stakeholders’ regularly, but is it the person that is difficult, the relationship or the situation?

 

Objectivity

It is hard to be truly objective, and the term ‘difficult stakeholder’ is almost always a subjective assessment. Sometimes the same person can be easy to work with in one context, and difficult in another. This points to particular situational issues which cause difficulties in reaching agreement. Sometimes a stakeholder seems difficult to one member of the team, but perfectly pleasant to work with to another. This may point to relationship or situational issues. And sometimes, we have to work with someone who is just difficult. With everyone. In every situation.

Despite general agreement that this person is difficult, we often tell ourselves it’s still a subjective assessment (“There are two sides to every story…” or, “They have friends and family so they can’t be like this all the time…”).

So, do objectively difficult people exist? Apparently – yes.

stakeholder 1

The Difficult Person Test

IDRlabs have developed the Difficult Person Test, which is based on research on the structure of antagonism. It uses 35 questions to create a radar chart of seven characteristics:

  •      Callousness
  •      Grandiosity
  •      Aggression
  •      Suspicion
  •      Manipulativeness
  •      Dominance
  •      Risk-taking.

Many people score highly against at least one area but a high score in only one area is unlikely to create a high overall score. A high score overall suggests, objectively, that you are more difficult to get along with than most people.

It is easy to work on the assumption that difficult people must already know they are difficult, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Most of us think we are self-aware (95%!) but research suggests less than 15% of us are able to demonstrate good self-awareness.

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stakeholder2

Self-Awareness

We should all make increased self-awareness part of our personal development plans. Though this test, like most self-assessments, has many limitations there is always something to be learned by reflecting on how our preferences affect our behaviours and how our behaviours affect our relationships.

Contracting

It is never too late in a relationship, group or team to re-set expectations. Contracting often takes place between groups or individuals at the start of a relationship to define how we want to work together, what we expect from each other and the behaviours we want to encourage and avoid. It also provides the opportunity to discuss how we will approach difficulties and unexpected behaviours when they arise. It enables an non-confrontational conversation that “as a group, we have moved away from the behaviours that we all agreed”.

Responding vs. Reacting

We learn in many ways that we cannot control other peoples’ behaviour, but we can control our response to it. Giving ourselves time to process an emotional reaction and turn it into a professional response pays dividends. Although we may feel provoked or even justified by the actions of difficult stakeholders, this legitimises the poor the behaviours and does nothing to improve the relationship.

Conclusion

Does it help to know that some people are objectively difficult? Perhaps not much, but it can at least provide an opportunity to reflect, consider how other people see us and even prompt a conversation within teams and organisations.

Before we label stakeholders as ‘difficult’, we need to consider the relationship and situational factors, and consider how we might try to resolve the difficulty. There are always two sides to every story, but perhaps the stories we believe about ourselves require a little more scrutiny.

Further reading: 

Have you taken the difficult person test? HBR (2021)

Why most people lack self-awareness and what to do about it. Training Magazine (2019)