by John C. Beck and
Thomas H. Davenport
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PDF Help For several years we have been investigating how the boom
of information technology—and the concomitant “info glut”—has affected
corporate leadership. Our research has convinced us that attention is the
scarce resource in today’s economy and that it can be managed.
Since attention management now plays such a critical role in
a company’s success, corporate leaders must take on the responsibility of
helping themselves and the people in their organization learn how to manage
attention.
Why Attention is a Scarce Resource Attention is the bridge between awareness and action. If an
issue does not receive attention, it will not result in action, because
attention is always a precursor to productive behavior.
Attention is at a premium partly—but only partly—because for many years information has been becoming less expensive to retrieve.
Today’s manager can, with just a few mouse clicks, call up more external
information than anyone can ever fully absorb—all while dealing with an
ever-increasing numbers of phone calls, e-mails and faxes.
But an equally important challenge is the increasing speed
and complexity of our business lives. Decades of global competition have produced lean organizations, very high customer expectations and a need for JIT
everything. Yet our research indicates that while the number of targets
corporate leaders must now set in their sights has multiplied, their capacity to aim at several targets simultaneously has not. Attention, quite simply,
continues to be a finite ability.
The Two Basic Problems of the Attention
Economy In the attention economy, every corporate leader faces two
basic problems: how to get and hold the attention of employees, consumers,
stockholders, potential employees and others, and how to parcel out their own
attention in the face of overwhelming options. Companies whose leaders succeed
at managing attention will reap handsome rewards.
Dramatically Articulate how Success is
Measured Corporate leaders who can effectively communicate what
success means to them are managing their companies’ collective attention.
Consider the famous example of Jack Welch at General Electric.
When Welch announced that each GE business unit had to be
either first or second in its market or no longer be part of GE—he was, first
and foremost, focusing attention. After all, businesses below that level are
often profitable; there might even have been a GE-owned business for which
staying number three made more sense. But in general, huge revenues and fat
profit margins go to market leaders. Welch’s vision of GE as a stable of
champions not only conveyed that message in a memorable way but also focused
the minds of employees (and stockholders) wonderfully.
Focus on Managing your Customer’s
Attention As an attention leader, you need to manage not only the
amount of attention but also the type of attention (see figure 1) your
customers give to your company and, where possible, to your competitors.
We have developed an attention-measuring tool called
AttentionScape* to help leaders understand what kind of attention their
customers give to their company and to their competitors’ companies. We have
found that company leaders are often shocked to discover the type and amount of
attention their competitors receive from key customers.
Once leaders understand where and on what their customers
focus their attention, they can better manage customer attention by marketing
and customer service strategies. For instance, if a key customer is giving
increased voluntary attention to your competitors, it may be because the
customer is beginning to shop around. One way of redirecting the customer’s
attention to your company might be to add front-of-the-mind attention tactics.
This might mean, for example, introducing new aspects to the customer
relationship routine, such as special offers.
At any given moment, the attention of
customers and employees can be described as one of six different types of
attention—all of which can happen simultaneously. Each type of attention has a
paired opposite.
- Aversive and attractive: Aversive
attention is paid when people are afraid of the consequences of not paying
attention. Attractive attention is given to elements people like and expect to
be pleasant.
- Captive and voluntary: People pay
voluntary attention to things they find innately interesting, but attention is
held captive when people have something thrust upon them.
- Back-of-mind and front-of-mind: Highly
focused front-of-mind attention might be paid to a conference call, while
back-of-mind attention might be paid to checking e-mail. Front-of-mind
attention is necessary for learning new tasks or information, but when these
become more familiar they are often relegated to back-of-mind attention.
Pay Attention to Where you Pay
Attention A key attribute of a corporate leader is the ability to
focus his or her attention. To develop this attribute, executives must
recognize where their attention is directed and discern if it is appropriately
and effectively aimed.
One way of determining if attention is effectively focused
is to review the actions of employees. Using the AttentionScape tool, our
research clearly shows that employees throughout a company base decisions about
what to pay attention to on their perception of what their leaders are paying
attention to.
On that note, we recommend that corporate leaders:
- Go public about where you spend your attention. This goes
beyond listing priorities. It means opening up and, for instance, explaining
what percentage of your time is spent dealing with particular issues and why
they require your personal attention. By telling others about the items in your field of attention, you will help your employees become more self-aware.
- Set attention goals for yourself. Know where you want to
spend your future attention.
- Get feedback. Often colleagues, employees or friends have a
better sense of how executives spend their attention than executives themselves
do. Ask colleagues and customers, “What do you think I pay attention to?” The
answers may surprise you.
Our research reveals that attention is a valuable lens through which to view the role of corporate leadership. Attention is the scarce
resource of our age—and a resource innately tied to what people in an
organization actually do. Leaders who understand and manage it are a long
stride ahead of their competitors.
This Outlook Point of View is based on
The Attention Economy, by Thomas H. Davenport and John C.
Beck, Harvard Business School Press, © 2001. For more information, visit
www.attentionbook.com.
*For more about about AttentionScape, a patent-pending
diagnostic tool, go to www.attentionbook.com and click on the Measure icon.
Thomas H. Davenport,
fellow—Accenture Institute for High Performance
Business, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For more information, please contact us.
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