The C-suite’s
infatuation with multitasking has brought senior executives to the point where
when they are able to focus, they focus on the wrong things, addressing only
the latest-and-loudest item in the inbox instead of something strategic and
long-range.
By Trey Taylor | September 10, 2019 at 07:29 AM
Editor’s note: Be
sure to read the first article in this series, “Why every CEO needs an executive
coach.”
As the story goes,
Bill Gates first met Warren Buffett at a dinner hosted by Gates’ mother.
During the meal, she asked everyone around the table to identify what they
believed was the single most important factor in their personal success. Gates
and Buffett both gave the same one-word answer: “focus.” Their answer
should not come as a surprise. After all, most successful CEOs and
entrepreneurs attribute their success to a dedicated — some would say fanatical
— commitment to achieving their goals. No interruptions. No
sidetracking. No juggling multiple balls in the air. Just focusing
in and doing those things critical to success.
Today’s scarcest
resource
On the surface, it
sounds easy: Focus on those things that are most important and leave the rest to
others. Yet the world we live in constantly pulls us away from our appointed
tasks by bombarding us with sensory interruptions. Sources of distraction
range from emails and online advertising to television, radio, magazines,
smartphones, social media, and more. Add to this the constant
interruptions from friends, family and business associates and it’s easy to see
why being able to focus has become such a challenge. It’s a new rule of
physics: Distractions increase at the rate necessary to fill the time allocated
to address them.
For a CEO, the
challenge is even more pronounced. In addition to the common distractions of
everyday life, CEOs are expected to make daily decisions about legal matters,
financial reports, marketing data, competitive analyses, sales statistics, and
a host of other information
constantly vying for their precious attention. Rather than allowing the CEO to
focus on a select number of critical areas, company employees, customers,
business partners, investors and other stakeholders draw them into endless
meetings and discussions. Most CEOs give in to these requests, believing
them to be germane to the strategic nature of their role. But they rarely
are.
Consumed by
multitasking
A busy mind is an
unsettled mind. Rather than insight, a busy mind leads to confusion,
hesitation and a lack of confidence, all of which can negatively impact the
decision-making process. Focus on everything and you focus on nothing.
Given the
importance of focus, it’s disheartening to find that like most of us, many of
today’s business leaders and CEOs have fallen victim to the myth of
multitasking: The more jobs they take on, the more goals they set, the more
meetings they attend, the more chances they will have to succeed. Instead, the
C-suite’s infatuation with multitasking has brought senior executives to the
point where when they are able to focus, they focus on the wrong things,
addressing only the latest-and-loudest item in the inbox instead of something
strategic and long-range.
In a study
from the University of California-Irvine, researchers analyzed business productivity.
Here’s what study lead Gloria Mark told Fast Company about on-the-job
interruptions: “When you have to completely shift your thinking, it takes time
to move into the new area of focus, then more time to get back to what you were
originally working on. We found about 82 percent of all interrupted work
is resumed on the same day. But here’s the bad news: It takes an average
of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the original task.”
Jonathan Spira,
author of “Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your
Organization,” estimates that interruptions and information overload eat
up 28 billion wasted hours a year, at a loss of almost $1 trillion to the U.S.
economy. He goes on to say that because of unnecessary, unwanted, and
completely unproductive interruptions, between 40 percent and 60 percent of our
time is completely wasted. For the CEO, a lack of focus not only
translates into wasted time, but an inability to positively impact those key
areas that are critical to a company’s success. How many good strategic
decisions were left undone three years ago because a CEO’s focus was anywhere
but where it should have been?
Too many choices
with too many variables
Good leaders make
good decisions. And one of the most important decisions today’s CEOs can
make is where to focus their efforts. The problem is that like a consumer
walking down a retail aisle filled with hundreds of products, a CEO is also
faced with numerous choices. Should the CEO focus on finance or on the competition?
Is it more important to meet with the company’s business partners or with its
employees? What activities should CEOs pull within their orbit and
what activities should they delegate?
A survey by
Waitrose & Partners found that 64 percent of consumers feel overwhelmed by
choice. CEOs have similar feelings. According to the Harvard Business
Review, a 10-year study of more than 2,700 leaders revealed that 57 percent of
newly appointed executives felt that the decisions they were now asked to make
were far more complicated and difficult than they had expected. Faced
with an abundance of variables and possible outcomes, CEOs will usually opt to
eliminate uncertainty by spreading their efforts across all possible areas of
their organization. The result is a lack of focus that can prove
debilitating for the CEO and harmful to the company.
Focus on three
areas
The mistake that
many CEOs make is believing that prior experience is a predictor of future
success. This is especially true of individuals who came up through
either finance or sales. While it’s true that both are important, neither
in itself will have a cross-functional impact on the entire company. Both areas
will also have seasoned executives who are fully competent of assuming the
chair previously occupied by the CEO.
CEOs need to
recognize that they need not be firefighters, ready and willing to rush to
every crisis or confrontation. Playing the role of firehouse Dalmatian, sitting
by and watching the action unfold, is no solution, either. Better to act as the
fire chief, monitoring the situation — no matter how potentially incendiary —
and only stepping in when the efforts of others fail to produce the desired
results.
Where should CEOs
focus their attention? On those select areas where their unique skills,
experience, reputation and authority can have the most impact on both the
short- and long-term success or their company. Each should be an area
that will positively affect all parts of the organization, not simply silos.
It’s only the CEO who has the perspective to see all the moving parts of
the business, so the ability to focus becomes a superpower.
For every company
in every industry, three areas are critical: Your people. Your
culture. Your numbers. Each is intrinsically connected to the others.
Taken together, they act as the foundation upon which your company will build
and maintain its success.
One pushback I
usually get when discussing CEO focus is this: “Isn’t financial performance
more important than any other area, and therefore the one place where CEOs need
to focus intently? After all, without strong margins, positive cash flow,
and a robust line of credit, most companies are doomed to failure. Why
place your attention elsewhere when the financials matter most?”
While positive financials
are critical to a company’s ongoing success, it’s important to understand that
financials are an outcome, not a driver. By that I mean that
positive financial performance occurs only when positive activity occurs in
other areas of your organization. For example, your financial performance
will certainly suffer if you have bad products, or poor customer service, or
sub-par processes. These, in turn, are dependent on two key areas
over which the CEO has unmatched influence: your people and your culture.
How can you ever
hope to produce good customer experience from a culture that does not embrace
people? Or achieve superior customer service with employees who do not
share your goals? Yes, key performance indicators (KPIs) are
essential. Without them, you are driving blind through a sandstorm. But
unless those KPIs are shared with your employees and reflective of your
company’s beliefs and values, they are simply numbers that are easily ignored.
Great leadership
requires balance
In 2009, James
Zenger surveyed over 60,000 employees to discover which characteristics made
leaders great. Who were more successful: results-focused executives who
zeroed-in on the bottom line, or executives who concentrated on enhancing the
company’s culture as well as the skills and happiness of its employees?
Business leaders who were able to focus equally on the financials and the company culture
(less than 1 percent according to another study) produced superior results 72
percent of the time.
These findings are
supported by more recent research from the recruiting firm Glassdoor, which
found that the most successful CEOs are those who surround themselves with
committed employees and strong leadership teams. In fact, the best predictor of
a high CEO approval rating is the strength of the management team. A company’s
culture and values are also a key consideration of employees ranking their CEO.
Employees also rate the CEO more favorably when the company has solid
financials.
Always remember,
the successful CEO is one who delegates. But never forget that you should
never delegate, defer, pass off, or ignore those three things that matter
most: your people, your culture and your numbers. So, clear your
mind, set your goals and then develop a laser-like focus on these three
areas. When you do, you will be taking the first step toward lasting
success.
Trey is the Chief
Executive Officer of Taylor Insurance Services, Managing Director of trinity |
blue, an executive coaching consultancy, and the Founding Partner of Ascend
Partners, an equity investment vehicle focused on the Employee Benefits space.
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