Do we need more strategy meetings? Or deeper unfractured undistracted execution time?
Photo by Alex McIl on Unsplash
Right now leaders, managers and executives are sitting down all over the world talking “strategy”? How many of them will break up the strategy meeting and move onto some other meetings? How many of them will simply move from one distracted state to another, from one strategy meeting to another, without ever really believing that they will be implemented deeply?
The problem with humans is that we have always had a tendency to switch on the monkey mind, that is hopping from one tree to another non stop. Since the beginning of time, human minds have a tendency to go off to the past and future, and to places other than the here. And that tendency is getting more and more serious as we are now allowing technology and new distractions like social media and instant messages to fragment our attention even further.
Most people who attend “strategy meetings” will already have their attention fragmented before the meeting, coming into the strategy talks with residual attention from previous activities, and then when they leave the strategy meetings, they run back into the great big distraction and attention fragmentation blended.
No wonder most executives feel that their strategies are not working. Frustrations breed more frustrations.
I would argue that instead of more or better strategies, we need more focussed undistracted attention in executing on strategies, and reexamine how we allow our mind be filled with constant distractions non stop.
We need to allow executives solid long blocks of time to implement and execute on strategies by intentionally:
- Not attending any meetings which are not short, simple and focussed
- Switching off all emails, social media, and instant messages while they are paying attention full time on implementing strategies
- Planning good unfractured time to stop everything and work deep on previous strategies.
By stopping to talk non stop on strategies in fractures mental mode, it would be much more productive for executives to practice going deep in current strategies, and get large unfractured chunks of time free from distractions, to actually get the execution and implementation done.
I am curious, how many of us executives are underperforming simply because we are not having any undistracted time? How many of us are selling ourselves short by opening the door of our attention to every email, social media and IM which want to come in?