In our recently released list of the year’s Top Time Killers, we drew attention to the distractions that get between so many of us and an otherwise productive workday. Knowing what impedes us from being productive is vital to being able to better manage our time and get things done.
Along comes this post found on LinkedIn about white boarding distractions so that you can know how to move them out of the way to focus on what’s important.
If you want to execute a strategy, you want to keep cool and move inexorably forward, and you think you do have a clear strategy, the first urgent thing to do is to list your distractions.
List them all, including the obvious ones, the small ‘just a little deviation but I will get back on track’, the ‘surely we can’t dismiss that topic’, the off track, off tangent, the incredible interesting ones, the fascinating collateral angles, the ones that need to be dealt with before X,Y,Z and anything else.
Have a Big White Board, or a big digital doc, or both, and label it ‘Distractions’, big letters, and have it in front of your eyes all the time. Look at that board at least once daily. Add as you go along.
If somebody in your team thinks something is not a distraction, it should be dealt with, but you think it is, you’d better have that conversation, pronto.
Be ruthless. Rule out compromises such as the ‘also important’. If it is important it should be in the strategy. The ‘also’ is nothing but a red flag. There is no also important in Strategy. If in the box, it’s important, the also is redundant. If not in the box, it’s neither important nor also.
When Barack Obama was caught in the controversy surrounding his pastor and preacher Rev Wright, the famous ‘God Damn America’, he tackled that ‘distraction’ (dominating national news) this way:
‘We can play Reverend Wright’s sermon on every channel, every day, and talk about until the election… We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hilary supporter as evidence that she is playing the race card, on we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, will be talking about some other distraction. And another one. And then another one. And then nothing will change’
And then nothing will change is our equivalent of nothing will be properly executed, or we will fool ourselves
Obama’s reaction is a good lesson on distractions. He sopped all crap at that point.
Political strategy here, ours is business strategy.
Incidentally, that Big White Board of Distractions can be revisited any time and something could be come a non-distraction. But, if going that way, make sure yon have a very good reason and all the Critical Thinking seasoning you can master.