Focus anybody ?

Daniel Goleman's (emotional intelligence) recent book is titled "Focus, the hidden driver of excellence". There are different levels of focus, but what I am interested in is the focus that exists (or is missing !) in a team.


Have you recently addressed your team (either those reporting to you, or a team of your peers), making a presentation about last year's results or this year's priorities ? Of course, when you make your presentation, you are concentrating on what you are saying, ensuring your message is clear and well understood. But have you ever tried - not easy, as you are presenting at the same time - to observe who is really listening ? Very often, some start to peek at their cell phone for the latest emails. And yet more often, distraction is not noticeable ... People can be nodding or staring at you and yet they think about something completely different. In larger groups, the challenge is even more important. A one-hour presentation by the CEO to the entire workforce is often the opportunity for some unnoticed Facebook time (for the audience that is, not for the CEO !).

More and more knowledge workers spend their working hours on a computer. As one of my Linkedin contacts recently admitted "I was looking for a piece of information on the Internet and ended up spending one hour watching Youtube videos !" Judging from the postings and likes on Facebook, many people I know spend a good portion of their day making sure they have not missed any important update on their social network ! Distractions are abound, and in my view have become a major challenge for productivity in organizations. A few years ago, blocking access to social media sites was a partial solution. But smart phones and fast networks make for a very good alternative !


How can you ensure that your people are working to solve your organization's challenges ? How can you ensure their minds don't wander off all the time ?

The most simple way is to ... stop talking. Ask someone a question, and wait for their reply. And then follow up their reply with another question, not your thoughts on what they just said. And then another question. When you ask someone a question, a very simple yet powerful thing happens: people think (because you are waiting for an answer). When people think and are actively engaged in the exchange with you, they will not wander off and get distracted. They are actually using their brains to think and solve the challenge you offer them. Action Learning allows you to apply this principle to a group setting. I have observed groups addressing an important business problem, for nearly 3 hours. There was no Powerpoint presentation, and nobody told the others what the solution was. People only asked questions to one another. The level of concentration and focus is very powerful. When you have a group of people engaging with each other, building on each other's ideas, intensely for 3 hours, the output of the session is so different from any regular meeting. One of the most frequent comments from a group that has experienced their first Action Learning session is "If only all our meetings could be run like this !"

Don't try to fight Facebook distractions: you'll lose ! Instead, engage your team, give them a challenge and ensure they ask questions to each other. Minds don't wander off when questions are being asked ... ! And the brain is still a pretty powerful tool to look for solutions.

Introducing the team Trust-o-Meter

The Thai women volleyball team recently became champions of Asia and the pride of the nation (at least for a while). The Bangkok Post interviewed Wilavan Apinyapong, team captain for seven years. She does not talk about hard training or the star players, but about trust, saying that her managing style is based on establishing trust among the players. "As a team leader, we have to make followers believe in us an that contributes to fellowship. When the foundation for trust is loosened, the followers may not accept your leadership."


Trust is also one of the key ingredients for a successful team Patrick Lencioni describes in his best-seller "The five dysfunctions of a team". In fact, he describes it as the foundation, the first condition that needs to be fulfilled if a team is to become successful. The four other conditions of a successful team are constructed on the basis of trust.

Why is trust so important in a team ? In a team with a solid trust level, team members feel free to ask questions, and even make mistakes, as they are not concerned they will be looked down upon or gossiped about by other team members (research by Amy Edmondson). And asking questions, looking for feedback, and making mistakes are the hallmarks of a team that learns. Learning so that tomorrow's challenges are addressed more effectively than today's. A team that is stuck in routine and does not try out new approaches is standing still. A team that is learning grows and enhances its capabilities to deal with future challenges.

Trust in a team should not justy be addressed in the "blindfolded-person-crosses-obstacle-course-guided-by-team-mates-vocal-instructions" during the annual team building exercise. Trust (or the lack thereof) happens in the everyday interactions and exchanges between team members.


How is your team doing ? How high is the trust level ? Send me an email and I will send a simple Trust-o-Meter test for your team: 3 minutes per person, Thai/English completely anonymous, for teams up to 15 people. A snapshot of the overall level of trust in your team, and the spread of the results, can give you a good indication of where your team stands, and how solid your team's foundation is.

Efficiency. Again, and again, and again

While we were enjoying the cool winter weather in Chiang Mai a few months ago, the tap water stopped running. We quickly learned that the main water pipe leading into the village was broken. This water pipe was 15 years old and made of concrete. Within 2 hours, the Provincial Water Authority had mobilized the repair team, with digger and all. The leak was located, the old pipe dug up, a new 5 meter long plastic pipe was inserted and the hole filled. After flushing out the brown water for a few minutes, all was back to normal after half a day of minor inconvenience (the swimming pool was a useful backup !).

Until two days later, when the same happened. The concrete pipe had broken in another spot. Same digger, same team, and a new 5 meter long plastic pipe. And then, of course, it had to happen again. Three times in one week.

The repair crew was very efficient. They arrived quickly (once even on a Sunday), started digging, replaced the pipe and filled up the trench. When I asked why they did not replace the entire concrete pipe that was falling to bits little by little, they told me that their “rules” only allowed to put in a new pipe once the old one was broken. So even if the 100 meter long concrete pipe would continue to break, the only possible solution was to replace each 5 meter section at a time, and mobilize the crew a total of 20 times.

The Provincial Water Authority was so focused on executing their procedure in an efficient way, that the obviously more effective solution of replacing the entire pipe, and mobilizing the team for a day or so, could not even be considered

This story makes you want to chuckle at the absurdities in government services. But are these limited to government bureaucracy ? What happens in our businesses ? We put in place processes for some reason at some point in time, often to solve a problem situation (broken water pipe). We train people to execute the new process (mobilize, dig, replace, fill) as efficiently as possible. They get good at doing it, practicing over and over again (3 times per week if needed). The problem gets solved in a rather satisfactory way and complaints are limited (repair within half a day). But then the environment changes (pipe no longer breaks once a year)  – new customer segments, new technology, new competitors – and the old solutions – that worked so well for so long and that we’ve become so good at – have become ineffective.

It is not easy to take a step back and ask the dumb question “why are you doing things this way ?” about something you have been doing for ever. An external eye looking at your processes can probably help to ask a few of those questions. They often turn out not to be so dumb after all.