Why FOCUS matters so much in leadership today

How hard or easy do leaders find it to stay focused? What challenges do they face when they are setting the focus and priorities for themselves and their organisations? Leaders find it increasingly difficult to maintain focus nowadays. There is so much going on and so many things they need to take into consideration. Endless impulses and disruptions make their life much harder to control. The technology-driven VUCA world we live in creates too much noise, both internally and externally, where everything changes very quickly.

All of us suffer from information overload. We live our lives with crammed calendars. Big data is a blessing and a curse at the same time. As one of the leaders I interviewed pointed out: “I have neither the time nor the capacity to validate all the data available for me.” We have become information devourers. But do we need all of it? How much do we need to make good decisions, to be well informed, or informed enough to make the right decisions? The answer is not easy.

We live in an age of busyness where overworking, doing overtime, and going the extra mile are applauded. While we talk a lot about working smarter rather than harder, the latter is more incentivised. Globalisation opened our world, generating so many options, so many opportunities for both businesses and people. Leaders and executives end up working 60 hours per week as a norm. There is a saying in multinational organisations that the work cannot be finished/completed, it can only be stopped. How sad is this? It creates the feeling of being in a rat race, which results in burnout in many instances.

The challenges of today’s business market are way too complex. This complexity expands the list of stakeholders for both leaders and organisations, bringing lots of contradicting and competing demands to the table for leaders to tackle. Finding the right or the best answer is sometimes very hard and, especially under enormous time pressure, it is even more challenging. In matrix organisations, there are many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs); often they are not aligned but pointing in many directions. This requires not only a laser-sharp focus but also the flexibility and the ability to see the details and the big picture at the same time and in the very instance.

Today’s challenges for leaders in FOCUS

All of us suffer from various challenges deriving from modern phenomena in today’s society:
■ Information overload. The tap is always open; it is almost impossible to switch it off.
■ Devouring information. Today’s easy access to all kinds of information via the internet has made us super consumers and addicted to more and more stimulants.
■ Multitasking. We have a continuously increasing number of tasks on our plate. One of the leaders I worked with said he has a list of 40 tasks a day to handle, each of which requires anything from a couple of minutes to 20 or so hours. Another said he receives around 200 emails per day. It is insane and impossible to handle such an amount of work unless they have months, which I doubt. The long list of priorities (which frankly rob the word priority of its meaning) can paralyse people and cripple their life.
■ FOMO: We have a fear of missing out, of being left out and left behind. We want to be involved in everything.
■ Action biased. We are in a constant doing mode. And if we add speed to it, we are in a constant rushing mode.
■ Short-termism and impatience. These are the king and queen of today’s business environment. We want everything right now, this very instant. Leaders want management data and reports to be at their disposal with one click at first thought. Clients want a full customer experience with the first click and blink. Owners and shareholders demand quarterly results and returns on their investments no matter what. We live in an impatient world addicted to performance.
■ Dopamine. According to Simon Sinek (2014), this instant gratification hormone has become the big boss and is fuelled by several sources. It contributes to the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction we get from completing important tasks, achieving goals, or winning competitions. This is why checking a completed task off a list feels so-so good, even if it is a low-priority task. We want the positive feelings we get from dopamine. On the other hand, it enables us to stay focused, and get through difficult phases of our career, especially when we know where we want to go. However, it can be dangerous as well because it can lead to addictive behaviour. In a very goal-oriented and performancedriven organisation in which dopamine is the primary means of reward, we can easily become addicted, which can lead us to take on an uncontrollable workload without any boundaries.

Considering these phenomena combined, it’s no wonder that there are so many leaders and managers (not to mention employees) who are burnt out after a couple of years in this business environment and that the engagement scores within the organisations are pretty low.

 

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