Well, if you thought we’d never make it through Leadership Capacity 4: Be Inclusive, we have. Perhaps a recap is in order. We’ve covered the first four leadership capacities of the seven:
Capacity 1. Shift Perception
Capacity 2. Point Out the Direction
Capacity 3. Plan the Journey
Capacity 4. Be Inclusive
Leadership Capacity 5: Hold the Focus—We live in an ADHD world. Tune in the CNN, there are six split screens and the images change about every six seconds. Our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. We are talking on cell phones while doing our business in public restrooms. We check our Blackberries when stopped at the intersection. But for all of our activity and multiple sources of input, we have an increasing problem: focus.
Leaders have a similar problem with focus with a boatload of demands vying for our attention. Losing focus happens for any number of reasons, and we do not need to inventory all the various ways, means and rationalizations used to justify our hyperactivity and continual changes in focus.
But most leaders I know are willing to admit they have a focus problem even though we live in a world of rapid change. And those that won't admit having a focus problem are typically confusing intensity and/or high activity with focus.
When you are holding the focus you are both holding intention on the future state, placing attention on taking right action now and are fully attuned to the world around you. Further, you are touching the world lightly, and getting more done. Intensity and high activity are not like that--that is called force. You can get things done, forcefully, to be sure. But that will not take you to the next level of leadership.
If you increased your capacity to hold the focus, to beat back the many barbarians at the gate all clamoring for your attention, you would be amazed at what you could actually get done--namely, the things that actually support your purpose and therefore have meaning for you. Without focus, we can still get a lot done, but that isn't the name of the game, is it?
Focus requires incredible discipline, remarkable self-regulation.
"Such power there is in clear-eyed self restraint." James Russell
How do you develop your capacity to focus? More on that later, but I’d like to point out right now that focus is aided by both having a system or framework to guide you and by learning to work with your emotions. Initially, either is insufficient for most leaders.
How do emotions tie in to focus? If you emotions are uncontained, you can bet that either your direction is off the mark (due to obsession or defraction) or your capacity to hold your focus is suffering (due to emotional intensity or changeableness). If your emotions (and the thoughts they kick off) are running the show, you simply will not be able to hold the focus. Your emotional and mental state will drive your focus. Game over. I don't care how good your system is.
How do systems help you focus? Systems can be very powerful in providing the framework within which to focus. There are different systems and frameworks available.
I like David Allen’s Getting Things Done process and system for individual leaders. There are other good ones. Any can help you create a gap in which you can make decisions, they can help you impose a discipline on your self, and they can help you objectify everything clamoring for your attention, free up your psychic RAM and guides you to make active choices (rather than living in denial that you can "do it all" because you are Superman or Superwoman).
For organizational focus, Jim Collins’ describes a structure: the Hedgehog Concept. Top performing companies have a very simple decision-making framework and they stick with it. That is their Hedgehog Concept. And it is one of several tools you should have to help you hold the focus at an organizational level.
The long and the short of systems is this: Systems provide a framework, and frameworks can be very helpful.
"When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost--and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl." T.S. Eliot
The combination of implementing and following a system while working with containing your emotions is very powerful, and we will get to the "how" in due time. This is an overview, not the actual book I am writing. (Even though Leadership Capacity 4 may have had you wondering).
So there you have it. Leadership Capacity 5: Hold the Focus. To all intents and purposes, the prior 4 capacities fall fallow if you cannot hold the focus, and take apppropriate action accordingly. Focus isn't focus without action: it is something else. Daydreaming.
Stay tuned for Leadership Capacity 6, up next.
(c)2008 Otis Woodard
