We also emphasize how technology and the digitally-driven world makes maintaining attention and focus difficult. For creative professionals, it’s prudent to understand what distracts us—the mechanisms behind distraction—and develop strategies and disciplines to rise above our tendency toward busyness.

If you doubt that our Western culture lacks focus, open almost any nonfiction book published in the last two decades. Notice how the book is typeset: the relatively short length of chapters and paragraphs as well as the frequent breaks in the text with a torrent of subheadings and other forms of spacing.

Now, open a book from the 1950s. The text can scroll for pages without as much as a new paragraph. Although today’s format may be more reader-friendly, the changes necessarily addressed the limitations of the general reader. Publishers realize that the reading public has a short attention span. (Surveys have shown that most people never get past the second chapter in a given book.)

And what happens when we fully adapt to social media, becoming accustomed to messages of 140 characters? (We have an entirely new generation relying on text messaging as a dominant form of communication.) What happens to our focus and attention then?

We all possess the capability for attention and focus, but it’s a faculty that needs consistent training and practice. As our fast paced information-intensive, media-driven world doesn’t promote or facilitate this vital faculty, it’s up to us to set the agenda—to commit to increasing our mindfulness, our contemplative practices, and our overall focus.

Otherwise, our perception gets more and more fragmented. Greater fragmentation has a tendency to weaken our values and show us a world of less meaning, leading to greater emotionality and stress. Attention and focus, in contrast, helps us expand to a larger vision of the world (and even of our businesses), giving way to steadiness, inner resilience, and peace. That’s reason enough to cultivate these vital assets.

Related posts:

1. Focus on Your Customers

1) Ask Compelling Questions

Use “what if?” questions to project different scenarios into the future. In A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative, Roger Von Oech, says, “In the imaginative phase, you ask questions such as: What if? Why not? What rules can we break? What assumptions can we drop? How about if we looked at this backwards? Can we borrow a metaphor from another discipline? The motto of the imaginative phase is: Thinking something different.”

2) Explore Context

Many problems arise because we neglect to zoom out from the content of the problem and examine the overall context of the situation. If sales are down, instead of revisiting your sales strategy examine the context of your overall industry. Has your industry changed? Are you disconnected with your customer’s needs? Is your product becoming obsolete? Take an expansive viewpoint before narrowing in on the specific problem.

3) Seek Wisdom

In Mastering the Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success, author Andy Andrews recommends putting together a personal Board of Directors, “advisors” for various areas of your life. Asking an experienced advisor from outside your industry for their thoughts on your problem can yield insightful perspectives. Even better: Instead of asking them what they would do in your situation, ask them what question they would ask.

4) Walk Away

Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to stop trying to solve it. Walking away from the problem brings forth the Wanderer archetype and the potential for hearing the Muse’s Call. The key is knowing when to let go of trying to solve the problem.

5) Mind Map It

Mind mapping is a visually-oriented brainstorming process using free association, colors and illustrations around a central theme. Read this post for a 60 second tutorial.

6) Switch Roles

Our minds tend to get locked into old patterns, leading to what’s called “paradigm blindness.” If you have a marketing-related problem, try putting on an engineer’s hat—or even a gardener’s hat. The idea is to shift your perspective so you can approach the problem from a new angle.

7) Use the Six Thinking Hats

Speaking of hats, de Bono’s Six Hats method provides you and your team with six different perspectives to utilize when tackling a problem. It’s an ideal tool for group brainstorming and problem solving.

8 ) Generate a Plethora of Ideas

As Aaron Shields points out in Creativity in the Workplace, research suggests that the most effective way to uncover the best solution is to brainstorm as many ideas as you can in a nonjudgmental environment before evaluating them.

There are numerous pathways to get to the answer you seek. Some pathways, however, are more effective than others. The key is to experiment with various methods to uncover which ones work best for you.

Different methods will be more effective in different contexts. Here, wisdom and intuition come into play.

Related posts:

1. Stay with the Problem
2. The Creative Process Revisited
3. Relinquishing Control of the Creative Process

In a fragmented, global marketplace, the concept of the nine-to-five job continues to become less relevant. You need to be interested in outcomes, not time clocks—in results, not efficiency. One can be efficiently busy yet ineffective at achieving results. Only results drive a business forward. The contribution of time alone does not necessarily help create a new customer or better serve an existing one.

Each person needs different conditions for creating. Some people prefer working from home; others prefer working at night. Realizing that some guidelines are needed, how flexible are you willing to become in the pursuit of a stronger, more profitable business? Financial service provider The Motley Fools offers unlimited vacation time as long as employees “do an amazing job” and meet deadlines.

The lesson: Track performance by innovative contribution rather than time on the clock.

Related posts:

1. Mastering Time Management in the Workplace
2. Effectiveness, Productivity, and the Elimination of Distraction
3. How to Quadruple Your Productivity

In our get-it-done-right-now world, it’s easy to spend your time being ineffective—that is, doing something that won’t produce results or grow your business. Drowning in a monsoon of to-do lists and activities, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s meaningful and important.

To help keep perspective on the bigger picture, make sure you don’t confuse what we call “The Big Three”: Objectives, Strategies and Tactics.

1) Objectives lay out your target—your ultimate goal—the end picture. Wal-Mart’s primary objective is to offer the lowest prices, always.

2) Strategies establish your basic guidelines and provide a framework for thinking toward the end goal. Wal-Mart uses massive volume and amazingly efficient distribution systems to guarantee shoppers everyday low prices.

3) Tactics are the various methods you utilize to achieve your objectives. Promotions, campaigns, product placements and displays are all tools used in the development and deployment of tactics.

Most executives focus too much on tactics and not enough time on defining objectives and strategies. They don’t clearly define and differentiate between objectives, strategies and tactics.

If you focus exclusively on tactics, you might too easily abandon the objective just because your tactic didn’t produce results. When a coach loses a game, he doesn’t change the objective of winning the next game. He simply changes his approach after learning what he can from his prior loss.

Tactics often fail. You have to spend endless hours testing and retesting, refining and thinking about your tactics. But only after you clearly define your objectives and overall strategy.

(The original article BJ Bueno and I wrote about objectives, strategies and tactics for Idea magazine can be found here.)

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1. The Ultimate Business Lens

Some executives believe back-to-back meetings define the modern business world. But as Drucker explains, “Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.”

Some executives are forced to work on weekends to get their “real work” accomplished.

“As a rule, meetings should never be allowed to become the main demand on an executive’s time. Too many meetings always bespeak poor structure of jobs and the wrong organizational components,” says Drucker.

Meetings are obviously necessary because different people are responsible for different roles and job functions. They must cooperate and share information to get specific things done.

But if you’re spending most of your work week in meetings, how are you supposed to contribute to the organization and produce results?

Make meetings the exception, not the rule. Value the results your organization achieves, not the time spent discussing them.

Related posts:

1. Conducting Effective Meetings
2. Five Habits of the Effective Executive
3. Introverts and Meetings

People refuse to see other perspectives and fail to open themselves up to a diverse range of options. Without openness, you can’t achieve shared understanding.

What can we do to overcome these challenges?

Realize there are different ways of interpreting and processing information. Develop a system of communication that facilitates shared understanding and your meetings will be more productive.

Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hat method helps facilitate more productive group meetings through utilizing different perspectives, but ensuring that everyone is aligned to only one perspective at a time.

Each hat represents a specific perspective. Each team member wears each hat in turn.  For example, “Okay, let’s put on our White Hats. Jim, you’re up first.”

White Hat: The neutral White Hat offers objective facts and figures and is used in the beginning of a meeting to establish relevant facts and information about the issue at hand.

Red Hat: The emotional and intuitive Red Hat is used to get people’s gut reactions to an idea or when you want the team to express their emotions freely.

Black Hat: The cautious Black Hat is used when you want to get the critical viewpoint of an idea or situation. The “devil’s advocate” hat helps decrease the chances of making a poor decision.

Yellow Hat: The sunny and positive Yellow Hat helps identify the value of ideas and plans. The Yellow Hat helps counterbalance the judgmental thinking of Black Hat.

Green Hat: The creative Green Hat comes on when you want to generate fresh ideas and new directions. This is a very powerful hat that each player needs to wear.

Blue Hat: The organizing Blue Hat sets objectives, outlines the situation, and defines the problem in the beginning of the meeting and returns at the end to summarize and draw conclusions.

Remember, these six hats represent perspectives, not people or personalities. Every person in a meeting must be able to wear each hat in turn. See de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats for further explanation.

Related posts:

1. Learn to Value Ideas
2. When to Share Your Ideas
3. Fear versus Caution

Inspired by Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive, here’s our latest slideshow on how to increase your effectiveness at work:

Related posts:

1. Effectiveness, Productivity, and the Elimination of Distraction
2. Missing Time
3. Using Creative Time Blocks

A manual transmission costs less, accelerates faster, performs better, and offers higher fuel efficiency, versatility and engine power.

So why do we choose an automatic transmission over a manual one? It’s easier to handle. We don’t need to think as much. Plus, we have our right hands free to sip our coffee, play with our iPhones, and change the radio station.

With manual transmission, context becomes more important. Driving up a snow-covered hill requires a different operation than driving down a highway during the summer.

Our minds have a similar option: A mental automatic and manual transmission.

When you’re not fully aware of what you’re doing, your brain switches to autopilot. You apply the same level of energy and thoughtfulness to every task that comes your way. When you are fully conscious of the situation, you stay aware of situational context in order to recalibrate your focus as needed.

It’s okay to ride downhill in neutral when conditions permit, but to be effective in the workplace it’s necessary to consciously shift your mental transmission by staying aware of context.

Many business-related activities require little mental effort like data processing, for example. Even emailing, organizing your desk, or attending certain meetings can fall into this category.

Developing a new proposal, talking to a new prospect, creating a new presentation, crafting an article, in contrast, can require a great deal of energy, thoughtfulness and concentration.

Thinking expends more energy than we realize. Accessing creative intuition can require even more mental alertness.

Be conscious of the kind of work you’re doing and shift into a higher alertness when necessary.

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1. Take a Mental Vacation

In The Effective Executive, what I consider a must-read for anyone who works in any organization, Drucker highlights five habits that executives must acquire to be effective:

1. Time Consciousness: Effective executives are aware of where they spend their time. (We’ll address this more specifically in another post.)
2. Outward Contribution: Effective executives focus on outward contribution to the organization, and ultimately, the customer. They gear their efforts toward results, not work.
3. Strength-Focused Mindset: Effective executives build on their own strengths as well as the strengths of their superiors, colleagues, and subordinates. They do not build on weakness or start out with things they cannot do.
4. Measurable Results: Effective executives concentrate on the few critical areas where superior performance produces measurable results. (See A New Results Mindset at Work.)
5. Effective Decisions: Effective executives make effective decisions. The focus is on a small number of fundamental decisions that greatly impact the organization.

How well do you size up? Where can you improve your level of effectiveness?

Related posts:

1. Five Habits of Highly Effective Team Leaders
2. Excessive Meetings = Ineffective Organization
3. Adopt a New Results Mindset at Work

While this to-do-list-driven thinking may help distribute various activities to different team members, it does not necessitate the achievement of organizational goals.

As Peter Drucker explains, “Productivity for the knowledge worker means the ability to get the right things done. It means effectiveness. Knowledge work is defined by its results.” As is always the case with to-do lists: they drive towards actions, not results.

Results planning doesn’t require another internal document, but a mindset your organization can adopt. With this new mindset, you and your organization will:

• Stay perpetually connected to a larger, shared vision
• Evaluate complex problems with higher understanding
• Conduct shorter meetings (this is benefit enough!)
• Make smarter, quicker decisions
• Be more effective at operating as a collective whole, serving your customers, and growing your business

How do you adopt a Results-Planning mindset?

1. Continuously ask the question: What is the result we are going to achieve? Cultivate a culture that values investing time envisioning the big picture instead of jumping into an endless series of to-do-list driven activities.
2. Next, ask: What are the conditions that need to be set in order to realize our desired result? Now, brainstorm and strategically think through the issue while keeping the end result firmly in mind.

While these two questions might seem simple, consistent and effective execution is extremely difficult.

But here’s the good news: Any progress you and your organization make towards a Results-Planning mindset will measurably improve your business over time. (I’ve had the privilege of witnessing the positive effects with over a dozen enterprises I’ve worked with.)

Related posts:

1. How to get the results you want
2. Five Habits of the Effective Executive
3. Results Thinking for Clarity and Direction