Want To Be Excellent? Then Stop Doing So Much

Miss Melbury's view of the doctor as a merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in accordance with fact.  The real Dr. Fitzpiers was a man of too many hobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in the profession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wide practice in the rural district he had marked out for the present.

The Woodlanders, Thomas Hardy

One critical characteristic of individuals and companies who excel in their fields is their ability to focus every bit of their attention on what they yearn to do extremely well.  Part of this deal is that they do less of everything else.  This is the decisive step for many of us: not doing more of this or that, but removing the innocent-looking things that rob our attention.

In my investigations into this, I’ve noticed two reasons for our inability to shut out the non-essential.  First, we find it hard to say no to additional things that seem valuable or interesting.  Second, we don't understand the massive hidden damage that the distractions and dissipation ultimately cause to our potential.

Damage Caused by Distraction

Evidence abounds of this damage caused by distraction.

At a high “where should I focus my business/career/talent” level, spreading talent across a wide range of activities is shown time and again to result in lower performance.  Examples range from the excellent Billy Beane’s disdain of under-performing baseball all-rounders, through to regular academic reviews showing the negative effects of business diversification.

Distraction is damaging at a day-to-day level too.  Studies of multi-tasking individuals reveal consistent reductions in performance, versus control groups who are forced to focus.  This is true even where the multi-tasking is intended to help performance.  One study of students showed that those allowed to look up recommended online information during lectures fared considerably worse than those only allowed to listen to the lecturer.

The distraction doesn’t even need to be present in the room to hurt performance.  Damage to performance by life stress is well-reported, with evidence even extending to performance deterioration in teenage ice-skaters caused by issues at home.

But the most worrying result I have found from research into distraction is this - people don’t realise how much it damages them.  In one study of medical students, participants were distracted with questions during simulated surgery, and had a consistently higher miss rate than a control group that worked in silence.  The frightening insight from this study is that only 9.5% of these under-performing students thought the distraction had affected them!

An Everyman Path of Focusing

There is a well-trodden path for achieving this ability to focus, and free ourselves from distraction.  This is to transport the person or team to an environment where everything is already set up for single-minded focus.  These environments can be permanent, for example elite academies and institutions, or temporary, like training camps and business war rooms.

Most of us can’t practically transport ourselves from our families to these tailor made centres of excellence, other than the odd trip to La Santa or business off-site.  A more realistic option is to do the hard work of transforming our own environment, company or working day.

“How-to”s aren’t to everyone’s taste, but if you’re interested in a basic exercise as a starter-for-ten in deliberating what to cut out, here are some simple questions:

What is the minimum I need to do, to be as good as I want to be at (...)? 

This minimum includes not just today’s work and output, but the development needed for tomorrow’s capability.

If you don’t know what this minimum amount is, then it’s a critical and sobering step to understand just how much this is.  Even if you think you know how much attention you need to commit as a minimum, it’s worth reviewing anyway, because you’ve probably under-estimated it.  One way to do this assessment is to identify a person, company or team whose performance sets the benchmark for you.  Then investigate how much accumulated time, effort and resource they have put in over days, months and years to get down the experience curve to where they are.

If you’re ambitious about how good you want to be, and investigate thoroughly what it takes, the minimum you need to do will be a very great deal indeed.  It will possibly be more than your entire available time or budget.  You’ll likely realise that your initial target was too broad or too soon; and you will need to focus further, to cut your minimum down to something feasible.

What are the distractions to my time and attention, which stop me getting down to this and doing it consistently?  How much of this could I take away if I really needed to?

I’m asking this question at both a high level and a day-to-day one.  High level distractions include non-core lines of business, passing interests, peripheral talents to practise, and major obligations.  Day-to-day distractions include everything that takes away your attention, time or hunger to perform, from the task at hand – elite performance academies are spartan places with clear tables and no pop-up email alerts!

What do I need to add, so that I can focus my attention properly?

The critical things to add in here, from which high performers really benefit, are relaxation and support systems.  I’m not aware of any real-life high performers who aren’t also great at making time to relax and reflect.  I’m not aware of any high-performing individuals or management teams that don’t also have great support systems.  As with many important and non-urgent things, we need to set aside time to invest in these, so they don’t get lost in the melee.  If we ignore them as peripheral, we can count on their consequences to come back to bite us very hard later.

Have I got plenty of slack left for the inevitable changes, delays, surprises, crises and over-runs?

If not, return to “1”.  If you think you’ve got too much slack, see how things go for a week.

If you try the exercise and have a look at what you’re giving up as a result, my guess is that it will consist of a lot of things that previously seemed useful, or at least harmless, but ate away silently at your potential by stealing your attention:

·         Interesting projects that have genuine potential, but are peripheral to where you’ve chosen to focus

·         Profitable projects or sidelines that aren’t critical to your core business

·         “Ought-to-dos” and “nice-to-dos”, which if you’re honest are more about being polite or following form than providing or receiving something of value

·         Other people’s priorities that you have just reacted to, without working through whether or how they fit in your plans

·         Tasks that any number of people could do just as well as you could, or services that any number of companies could provide

·         A plethora of regular day-to-day background distractions

Now look at what you’re adding to replace it, which will be more of this:

·         Much more time and resource to devote to the small number of things you want to be extremely good at

·         Activities that build your future capability

·         Time to reflect and even relax

·         Investment in your support systems

·         Slack time, so that inevitable sidewinders can be accommodated without chaotic triage

In summary, we now have a lot more time and attention spent in and around what’s really important, and a lot less to distract us from it.

Here’s a couple of tests I use with clients and observe in others, to see if this chosen focus is sustainable.  First, the prospect of focusing so much of attention on one or two things needs to be exciting, so exciting that it can fuel countless hours of relentless commitment.  Second, other people – customers, sponsors, backers and supporters – need to value it sufficiently to pay more than enough for the performance we’re providing in return.

How other people have got to this sort of exciting focus, one that is also productive and sustainable, is part of a whole new subject.  But I’ll cover that another time.  I want to stop this article from doing too much.

Copyright Latitude 2010. All rights reserved.

Latitude Partners Ltd
19 Bulstrode Street, London W1U 2JN
www.latitude.co.uk

Florence Nightingale - A Case Study in Excellence

If I were to choose a list of great people who embody what it takes to be excellent, Florence Nightingale would rank above every single living person I can think of.

The commonly-held view of her is romantic, the archetypal nurturing carer; someone "called upon by God" in her own words to spend her life in nursing despite expectations of feminine nobility.  But beneath this velvet glove, there was a tough and practical nature; which supplemented her passionate side to make her a case study in excellence.

I'll describe her less recognised side in terms of the attributes of high performance I’ve introduced previously.

Constant feedback and measurement of progress

Nightingale was absolutely systematic and rigorous in using measurement to track improvement.  In addition to being a nurse, she was an accomplished statistician, and in her time pioneered graphical representation of information.  She is credited with developing the polar area diagram, which she used to analyse progression of Crimean War conditions.  Examples of these elegant and insightful charts are shown here:

She later used a statistical study of sanitation in India to recommend improvements in public health, and was invited to become the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society.

Honest diagnosis of what is and isn't working, what works best and what to change

When Nightingale first arrived in the Crimea, she was convinced that high hospital death rates - ten times greater than death rates from combat - were caused by poor nutrition and supplies, and by over-working.  In the first year of her presence, despite her efforts, mortality went up to the highest level of any hospital in the region.  Only after analysing evidence that indicated the benefits of sanitation did she turn her focus to this, subsequently pioneering sanitary living conditions in the army and then other hospitals.  Compared to the improved survival rates from Nightingale-inspired changes, the benefits of modern drug developments are a rounding error.

Pursuit of challenging boundaries, constantly reviewing them to be just right versus capabilities

Nightingale started as a nurse with the challenge of cleaning hospitals in the Crimea, but stretched her boundaries consistently over time.  After Crimea, she founded the first school of nursing; she then wrote the first textbook on nursing, then introduced trained nurses into the workhouse system, and then launched trained nursing to the US through her mentorship of Linda Richards, ultimately founding the nursing profession in both the UK and US.

In clarifying her thoughts on the profession, she wrote what would be a seminal work in the progression of feminism.  In applying them, she undertook to statistical studies and lobbied for sanitary reform that supported a quartering of the British Army death rate in India.

Focus only on relevant actions and outcomes that are within your control

She couldn't do much about the Crimean war that caused men to be hospitalised, or the medicines available, but could she sort out the sewers.  Following the Sanitary Commission’s work, death rates fell from 42% to 2%.

She couldn’t do much about the insanitary living conditions of the British poor, but she could send nurses to the workhouses, a precursor to the National Health Service.

De-cluttering of everything else that distracts, and creating support systems to allow such dedication

Nightingale was as single-mindedly dedicated to nursing as Hannibal was to toppling Rome, or as Wylie Coyote still is to catching Road Runner.

She rejected her first high profile marriage suitor, with an explanation that marriage would interfere with her calling to nursing, and rebuffed other approaches regularly through her life.  She had the education, privileges, opportunity and backing to take up legion other causes, particularly the growing feminism movement of which she was in a position to be a leading light; but she chose to focus her time and attention on nursing and the improvement of the conditions of the sick.

She was also fortunate to have support systems that allowed this commitment.  She was from a wealthy background, and her allowance from her family was large enough that she was not distracted by worry about making ends meet.

Relentless continual mindful application for hours and hours and hours

Nightingale was “called by God” to nursing at 17.  She used her time before she could become a nurse to study hospitals, producing her first work on treatment of the sick at 21.  She announced her decision to enter nursing when she could, at 24, which was then the focus of her attention for the rest of her life.

It is hard to think of a more intensive, unremitting, immersion in any profession than the Scutari military hospital of the Crimea where Nightingale made her name in 1854, as far from society as could be conceived, and where 4,077 soldiers died in her first winter.  Her obsession with hospital conditions was relentless throughout her life; even when bedridden with severe brucellosis, she did pioneering work on hospital design that was implemented around the world.

I wouldn’t invite her to my ideal party, because she wouldn’t turn up to anything that wasn’t about improving the conditions of the sick.  But that doesn’t make her less of an inspiration.

To many people, she’s the magical, caring lady-with-the-lamp.  To me, she’s the intrepid, forensic, challenging, realistic, relentless, hard-as-nails, make-it-so Flo.  Today’s performance gurus couldn’t hold a candle to her.

Copyright Latitude 2010. All rights reserved.

Latitude Partners Ltd
19 Bulstrode Street, London W1U 2JN
www.latitude.co.uk

Loving that Performance

"But, tell me, why should your leader—why should you all—spend your money and risk your lives—for it is your lives you risk, Messieurs, when you set foot in France—and all for us French men and women, who are nothing to you?"

"Sport, Madame la Comtesse, sport,"

The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy

The performance improvement world now possesses some myth-busting evidence and fascinating case studies about what it takes for anyone to do something really superbly well.  I've been spending time researching this subject, and reviewing its application, and will cover it in a series of forthcoming posts.  As a pre-view, a simplified how-to-be-excellent list from this research is as follows:

1.  Challenging standards, which are constantly reviewed to be achievable but not too easy or difficult
2.  Focus only on relevant actions and outcomes that are within your control
3.  Constant feedback and measurement of performance and progress
4.  Honest diagnosis of what is and isn't working: what works best, and what to change
5. Removal of everything else that distracts, and support systems that allow you to do this
6.  Relentless continual mindful practice or application, intensively, for hours and hours and hours

As you can imagine, in order to pursue this relentless, repetitive process, you really do need to love what you're doing.  This apparently ethereal issue is what I want to cover here – let’s talk about love.

Here’s what I don’t mean by love of what you’re doing.  I don’t mean the pursuit of a lofty goal.  I don't deny there's a part of each of us that feels the need to do something worthwhile; and I’ve no doubt that rousing ideals provide genuine motivation.  But, by themselves, they don’t make us good at whatever we’re doing.  We’ve all heard the jaded inspirational anecdote about a sweeper at NASA saying he’s putting someone on the moon.  Was he a satisfied sweeper?  Was he actually any good at sweeping?  The anecdote runs out of steam on those points.  Anyway, for many of us it's pretty hard to find the ultimate external benefit in much of the work we all do, to understand how everything comes together in the multifaceted interactions of society.

When I talk about loving what you’re doing, I mean the love of doing the thing for its own sake; the total absorption in process that you see in a great cook, scientist, bike mechanic, musician, orator, or athlete.  Racking my brains, it’s hard to think of any examples of human excellence that don’t display this absorption.  Neither does it seem to be confined to celebrated, world class performers; in my world, that same absorption is a hallmark of the top performing individuals and teams with which I have the pleasure to work.

So how do you or I access this love of doing something for its own sake, which underpins all this excellence?  There's a received wisdom that stage one in becoming excellent and satisfied is to "follow your passion"; simple as that.  Taken in isolation from the reality of what your friends, customers, team mates, and family all value, I think this advice is downright dangerous and destined to end in tears most of the time; but that’s a subject for another day.  My point for today is that the world is not so linear: passion doesn’t just lead excellence, it also follows.

Even casual everyday evidence seems to show that our enjoyment and passion in doing something emerges and grows from excellence and application – the better we get at it, as long as we’re improving, the more we enjoy it.  Did Tiger love golf the first time he swung and missed with the giant plastic golf club his dad bought him before he could walk?  Did Becks immediately love curling in free kicks at the local park; or was that swerving, match-saver against Greece a bit more satisfying than the early ones?  Did Tolstoy get passionate about prose in his first one-pager about his family cat; or did his passion become a little stronger with the development of an art that produced Anna Karenina?  At a lower level, watch any celebrities-have-a-go-at-new-skill type show, and see how much they’re enjoying themselves in their first class or test, compared to the end of the series when they’ve developed a degree of mastery.

So my view is more emergent than the "start with your passion, something that stirs your loins, and watch good things follow" view of excellence.  Fair enough, it’s smart to start with something that we enjoy, which works for both us and the others we care about commercially and socially.  The key step for me is the next one: do all the things that it takes to do the thing really superbly well, and immerse ourselves in the process.  With that, we’ll see the passion grow with our growing excellence, and we’ll enjoy the sport.

Some relevant links:

A simple experiment showing that performance increases with relevant challenge, and that enjoyment increases with performance, even in the most apparently meaningless task.

http://cres.usc.edu/pubdb_html/files_upload/685.pdf

Alain de Botton talks with Russ Roberts about people’s absorption in the process of their jobs.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/09/de_botton_on_th.html

The Scarlet Pimpernel

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/60/60-h/60-h.htm

 

Copyright Latitude 2010. All rights reserved.

Latitude Partners Ltd
19 Bulstrode Street, London W1U 2JN
www.latitude.co.uk