Performance, Performance, Performance

You have a performance contract to tell you what you have to do. You have a performance appraisal to tell you how you did. You get a performance bonus based on your appraisal and the judgement of those with power to allocate reward. For your task in hand if you can understand the problem, apply collective intelligence to create a solution, gather resources and manage them well then success follows. But reality is somewhat more complex. In any organisation there are usually multiple versions of the problem, plenty of rivalry between the factions applying their intelligence, usually intense competition for scarce resources and plenty of opportunity for misunderstanding to get in the way of good management. Organisations are a messy battlefield where all of these conflicting forces are fighting hand to hand and alliances are being formed and failing all the time. In all this confusion the most important enquiry you can make to help you navigate your way to great performance is 'what are you paying attention to?'

What you pay attention to is the most precious resource at your disposal to get things done. Out of everything you have available to you within your awareness an infinitesimal amount grabs your attention. You also have less control over what you pay attention to than you might think. What you pay attention to follows a similar process to the way you read this page. To read this page you start in the top left corner, work across each line to the end and then drop down and start at the next line moving left to right. Your attention is on a similar rail track whose path is determined by the task you are working on, your worldview and your memory. As soon as you have chosen a task your cognitive machinery will instantly take control of your attention and take it where your worldview and memory determine it should go. It does so in exactly the same way your eyes follow the words on a page. Your worldview is your set of rules and assumptions built up over your life time experiences. Memory is used to inform how you have handled similar situations before. Once you are on this track there will be no stopping you and most of your cognitive effort goes in to confirming your view is correct and contrary information is wrong. If you imagine an organisation with everyone doing this the confusion, battles and stress that ensue are inevitable. The source of great potential to improve your performance and that of the organisation around you is to take the following steps:

1. notice what you pay attention to
2. articulate the facts you are selecting and the assumptions you are making around what you pay attention to
3. explore what would make the opposite of your assumptions true
4. share your findings with someone very different to you in worldview and experiences

Always remember that no two people are ever paying attention to the same thing.  You can make yourself so much more powerful if you realise this and make use of what people around you pay attention to.  The first step is stopping for a moment to notice what you are paying attention to and to be interested in what else might be available.  You reach your full potential when you can do this and start to make use of what is available to help you in what you ignore.