How to Focus in an ADD World

By Pat Heydlauff

For sustainability in a complex ADD world, the key is focused engagement. What the business community knows today is that old ways are not sustainable and you can no longer execute without engagement. However, a strategic business advantage comes from knowing there is a flow to the focus of engagement. Focus is like water, it flows where it is easiest to flow and as leadership, you take advantage of its flow or you don't. The flow is already in your workplace and within your workforce but not necessarily attached to your workforce's engagement.

An engaged workforce needs to be a focused workforce to create sustainability and increase productivity. People are always engaged – sometimes they are as engaged in not doing something as they are in doing something. The question is, are they engaged in and focused on what you want.

If you want a strategic advantage, you need to keep yourself and your workforce focused and engaged when there are so many distractions pulling everyone apart. The answer lies in harnessing and using that flow of focus to your advantage in a complex world where everyone is constantly bombarded with disruptions and interruptions. Engagement 3.0 has arrived - it is not just about engagement but focused engagement.

Re-defining the Workplace Environment

How do you focus your workforce's engagement? It's not about getting people more engaged, it's not about tapping into their engagement, it's all about focusing the engagement they already have. This begins in the workplace environment.

Are you letting focus slip away, sending it away, and/or letting it go of free will somewhere else? Worse, have you unknowingly created a workplace environment that contributes to the rapid disbursement of focus or allows it to get stuck in the minutia of the mundane and mediocre? Do you have distractions built into your workplace that break their flow of focus?

People already know they need to focus, but they don't understand that there is a flow to it. What interrupts the flow of focus in your workplace environment and what can you do to create an environment that helps them focus on meeting your needs and requirements.

The Top Three Ways Focus Leaves Your Workplace and Workforce

• Lack of clarity. To be totally effective and maintain focused engagement, communication is critical. Communication is a two-way street on your roadmap to a focused engaged workforce. The more completely and clearly you can define the expectations and outcome for your workforce the more focused they will be.
  But don't stop there. The strategic advantage comes from having them playback your communication expectations so that there is not even the space of an eyelash between what you have communicated to them and their playback to you.

• Abundance of distractions. Distracted focus is everywhere. Physical workplace environment distractions are common such as clutter, improper positioning of management away from their staff, colors on wall that encourage dysfunction or anxiety and no clear visuals to nurture focused engagement. It's not just what they hear that is important but what they playback to you and then what they do.
  When you add the complexities created by electronic communications like texting, tweeting, and a need for constantly being in contact but not connected, it all adds up to a constant drain of focus. It sets up roadblocks to the flow of your workplace focus allowing the focus of your engaged workforce to meander to the next urgent issue, whether relevant to the designated objective or not. Eliminate or minimize all physical roadblocks and develop guidelines for distracting electronic disruptions and interactions.

• Not harnessing the flow of focus. With today's high tech low touch instant gratification world, harnessing the flow of focus of your workforce is critical.  There is a natural flow to the focus of your workplace just like there is a natural flow to a production line or the movement of a river. When a river goes out of control like the mighty Mississippi it can wreak millions of dollars of havoc and destroy everything in its path.
  Similarly, when the flow of focus in your workforce is not harnessed and channeled to meet your needs, production and profitability suffer while employee stress and anxiety increase. Develop a roadmap that harnesses and channels focused engagement by creating a high-touch workplace environment where focus is nurtured by using visual communications, one-on-one interaction often and involving the workforce in its development.  Your workforce will be both engaged and focused on the task at hand and understand its roll within the long term company vision.

Workforce environments that create results blend the awareness of focus with the reality of distractions. Using a flow of focus with your engaged workforce will help you harness the complexities of distraction, improve execution and productivity.

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