Managing Attention of Others

There are bloggers out there all over the world talking about different aspects of attention management.  Some examples are:

• Breaking Email Addiction:  Michael Hyatt talks about accessing email less often to get more done.
• What Not To Do Lists:  Lifehacker talks about deciding what not to do in order to better get things done (interestingly enough, referencing the same book Michael does)
• Managing Attention Crisis:  Yours truly talks about managing your RSS feeds, email, snail mail, and all the other information you have coming in

I could go on and on.  Guides on when to call people versus email, guides on when to call meetings, guides on all sorts of things to help us manage our time better- individually.  We all probably see these things, we’re probably all adopting them at different levels.

The question is, what are you doing about it at an organizational level?  For example, you may be practicing the email-twice-per-day method of getting things done.  Are your direct reports doing the same?  Are the managers working for you expecting their direct reports to respond to email instantly?  How are you integrating the needs of folks in the client support area, who need instant response from the business in order to help customers, with these sorts of practices?  Do you have a team, departmental, or even corporate strategy to doing this sort of thing uniformly to help your employees be more efficient, and to help their personal practices work together, as opposed to working against one another?

Don’t you think you should?

Run some of these articles by your HR department.  Today.  Open a conversation with them about corporate training on GTD practices.  Open a conversation among your senior management on when and where specific GTD practices can help you (or hurt you) at an organizational level.  Individuals all over the world are making their lives better every day with this stuff.  It’s real.  Why isn’t your company leveraging it?

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