Pay Attention!

 

I hardly write follow-up post for my articles. However, a recent article “To Kill A Woodpecker” has generated some interesting comments that prompted me to explore further into the topic of ‘Attention’. Specifically, a comment from Manik Sanadi, Head – Projects PAM ACG Worldwide, has caught my ‘attention’. Manik says “What you need is right mix of when to look from 30K feet and when to look at the ground.” I couldn’t agree more.

Being able to navigate through different levels of information and zoom into a specific level to focus on the desired details provides us a holistic view of what we are managing. Take the experience of driving as an example. We have to keep our focus on the traffic in front of us while constantly checking back on the rear and side mirrors for the surrounding traffic conditions. It is precisely this ability that helps us to keep road accidents at bay.

The same analogy may apply to project management as well. What methods do you use to stay abreast of the deluge of information coming from different levels in your projects? How do you keep an eye on the potential risks at each level and prevent them from turning into real issues? Sometimes, as a project manager, we tend to get too deeply entrenched in a particular area of work and lose track of the bigger picture. Just like driving, we can’t keep focusing on the traffic ahead and forget about the brake pedal. It takes seamless concurrent coordination among the hands, legs, eyes and ears to drive a car. In other words, it means that attention has to be shared and switched continuously from one to another. Now, how do we achieve this in the projects we are managing?

Before we continue, let’s try out a simple visual experiment. Take a look at the image below. Now, focus on the black dot in the center. Keep staring at it and move closer to the image if necessary. After a while, you will notice that the colored fluffs around the black dot start to disappear. Eventually, you will only see a grey square with a black dot in the center. Do not get startled. There isn’t any trick here.

From the above experiment, we can see that attention is a scarce and limited resource. Once you have set your focus on something you will tend to lose track on the others. As William James aptly described in his textbook “Principles of Psychology”:

“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought... It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others...”

If this still sounds murky, then probably what we have discussed so far on the various facets of ‘Attention’ could be better explained and represented in the Sohlberg and Mateer hierarchical model. Below are the five hierarchical levels of the model in ascending order.

1. Focused attention: The ability to respond discretely to specific visual, auditory or tactile stimuli.
2. Sustained attention: The ability to maintain a consistent behavioral response during continuous and repetitive activity.
3. Selective attention: The ability to maintain a behavioral or cognitive set in the face of distracting or competing stimuli. Therefore it incorporates the notion of “freedom from distractibility.”
4. Alternating attention: The ability of mental flexibility that allows individuals to shift their focus of attention and move between tasks having different cognitive requirements.
5. Divided attention: This is the highest level of attention and it refers to the ability to respond simultaneously to multiple tasks or multiple task demands.

Although this model was originally developed for clinical use, it has since been widely adopted in evaluating a person’s ability to pay attention. As we have seen from the above, attention is multi-faceted. Thus, it follows logically that the methods we employ to address attention-related problems should also be manifold and adaptable to the actual needs. This is definitely a good starting point for us to explore what we could do to help project managers stay focused in their projects.

Congratulations! You have reached the end of the article. Thank you for paying attention without switching.