The best use of organisational energy

Conserve energy for attention

Do you remember the days when phone numbers had seven digits? It’s the same reason why schools divide the teaching day into 5 - 7 periods. It’s all got to do with why you can remember 6 items for a shopping list without writing it down, but probably not 12.

George Miller, in 1956, published one of the most-cited psychology papers,?“The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”. In it, he explained how we have neurologically-limited attentional capacity to approximately seven ‘chunks’ of information. What’s important here is that these aren’t individual ‘facts’ or ‘items’ — but groups or categories.

So, apart from dictating phone number configurations, what’s the practical application of this?

I’ve just come off a call with a CEO to whom I had to convey my major insights following the completion of a phase of work. I could have talked at her for half an hour covering off 30 ideas. Instead, I said, “I have five major areas of comment, and there’s a logical sequence to them.” I then listed them as headlines, and asked her where she’d like to begin. Throughout the discussion, she easily recalled all five of these and, within each, we had a focussed and productive discussion.

Question: What can you do to focus others’ attention on complex material by limiting categories of information to “7 plus or minus 2”?

Using values to direct energy

Nowadays, I do an enormous amount of work with organisations helping them understand, and articulate, their?value?(My definition: “Value is an improvement in condition, for which someone will pay”). But, sometimes, clients also ask me to help them distill their?values?(My definition: “Values are beliefs that, when shared — and convert to behaviour — predict your success”).

Many organisations are famously ‘values-led’ (Netflix, IKEA, Danone, Unilever, Disney) and each has its own way of using values to direct organisational energy. Some I’ve seen recently are superficial, yet powerful:

• One client hasn’t just developed logos for each of five values we developed, but printed them all over the corridors and public areas of their offices, as well as named their meeting rooms after them. This means that staff say, “The meeting’s in Exceptional 2” or “Let’s talk about that in Pioneering 3”.
• Another client’s staff took it upon themselves to design (and pay for) colour-coded t-shirts that correspond with their 4 values. When their customers ask what the t-shirts mean (e.g., “We do the right thing, not the easy thing”) staff willingly explain their relevance to the customer.

Of course, there are more conventional ways to internalise values: recruit and promote staff against them explicitly, develop branding and public communications using them as a reference, conduct regular staff ‘deep dives’ exploring the meaning of the values, identify and reward staff who exemplify specific values, and use the values as criteria for project or program evaluation.

Question: If I visited your organisation, could 90% of your staff convincingly explain your values to me,?and how they help your customers?

Stopping dumb things

Wise counsel from a former federal government minister who’s now chairman of a board I work with: “Strategy is as much about getting the right things done, as about stopping dumb things”.

The need to stop ‘dumb things’ often occurs when a ‘saviour’ becomes a ‘demon’ over time. For instance, in the 1920s chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were hailed as revolutionary chemicals, enabling the spread of many modern conveniences: just two are air-conditioning (as refrigerant) and deodorant (as propellant).

That all changed in the 1970s when chemist Frank “Sherry” Rowland showed without question that CFCs were causing (fortunately reversible) damage to the ozone layer. So, ‘stopping dumb things’ was now on the UN’s agenda, Rowland got a Noble Prize, and the Montreal Protocol is today lauded as one of the 20th century’s standout examples of transnational regulation.

Question: “What dumb things should you stop?”

A final wise word

Heard on the strategic leadership grapevine this week: “Set goals in stone; make paths from sand”.

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Observe how you’re adding value throughout your daily professional and personal activities, and I look forward to being back with you next Friday.

Andrew