Coincidence of Attention

Sometimes, people praise the barter system; a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. The idea of a serendipitous trade like this, perhaps with someone in the community we live, sparks a bit of joy. It feels like you bypass a middleman. But it’s novel and an exception because it’s a pain in the ass. It requires a coincidence of wants between two parties. It sparks joy for the same reason that a shooting star sparks joy - they don’t happen very frequently. If you didn’t have a monetary system to smooth the coincidence of wants over time, you would feel the painful ineffectiveness of a barter system.??

There’s a parallel conundrum in the knowledge work world; a coincidence of attention. With the number of participants involved in complex projects and the amount of priorities weighing on their minds, the occurrence of synchronous situations where people come to the table fully engaged is rare. In this system, you are consistently banking on the hope that multiple people log onto a meeting prepared and undistracted. You are relying on a happenstance that multiple people are operating at their best when a meeting is scheduled. This is probably Ok when the meeting volume is low and the time window for when meetings occur is small. That’s not the world we operate in today, and the future of work looks even less like that. A toy model helps me think through how I might navigate this problem.?

Scenarios

We start with two relatively simple scenarios for a basic understanding of the problem.

In the first scenario, a “team” has 3 individuals (team is in quotes because a team can represent not necessarily hierarchical reporting structure, but the group you need to work with on a regular basis). They are all located in the same time zone which indicates the “typical” business hours are 9-5, Monday-Friday. We also assume that team members have 6 hours per day where they come to the table ready to engage, but each individual is more attentive at different times of the day.?

Different team members have different attention preferences. Some like to meet in the morning. Some like to meet in the afternoon. Preference stems from different life situations, but also from individual physiology. So, we end up where 38% of the day this team can come together in a state of flow. 38% isn’t ideal, but if team members can have control of their time and the team can be engaged together in these windows, that’s an Ok trade-off.??

In the second scenario, a team has 6 individuals (double the size of the first team). They are located across 4 time zones (think New York and San Francisco). As such, "typical" business hours can be 6AM-8PM EST (an 11-hour window, but a 14-hour span), Monday-Friday. How so? 9AM EST is 6AM PST. Someone most engaged at 9AM EST will thrive if people in San Francisco are ready to go at 6AM PST. On the other end of the day, someone engaged at 4PM EST will thrive if people in New York are ready to go at 7PM EST. Hopefully, even before the chart, you see where this is going.

In this second scenario, we get 9% of the day where this team can come together in a state of flow. It only gets worse from here as team size grows and the number of time zones they are operating across increases.?

The Cost

This isn’t new to many, but it’s new to many others. How does this help us think about remote teams and organizations? In reality, employees will comply with an out of control meeting cadence. They will adjust everything else. They will be at those meetings at whatever time, and you (the organization) will get them at their, not best, but mediocre. Additionally, if the meeting is poorly moderated and the attention of many is sub-optimal, this may breed resentment.? Using this thinking model, teams and/or organizations can take action to manipulate team sizes and/or work windows to hopefully avoid mediocre participation and/or resentment.

First, organizations can put rules (or guidelines) in place for when meetings occur, and then team members can adapt their lives around those guidelines. For instance, the team of 6 (above) may decide they only have meetings between 12:00PM and 6:00PM EST. The trade-off is that individuals lose control of their time, which is one of the most invigorating things about remote work agreements. Plus, in my experience, people don’t abide by these recommended guidelines.?

Second, organizations can attempt to reduce the size of teams. The trade-off, potentially, is the suboptimal decision making that happens when the right people are left out of the conversation.?

In my working life, I've been part of too many meetings where my attention was severely lacking or my leader’s attention was lacking or the focus of the meeting was lacking. This toy model makes it obvious why that was the norm rather than the exception (additionally, I’m skeptical that people really have 6 hours of full attention power every day which would make the results worse). I know first hand that the coincidence of attention problems needs a solution.

The Solution: Async Communication Tools

Neither controlling team size and/or work windows, proposed above, is the right approach. Both of those approaches are like trying to use a barter system to match attention availability. What good would it do to limit the amount of people you can swap with and/or reduce the time windows where they can do the actual trading? That would make the system even worse because people wouldn’t get what they want/need! Remember, the solution to the coincidence of wants is a monetary system. The equivalent of a monetary unit in the world of remote knowledge work is asynchronous communication tools.?

These tools and methods allow teams to interact and think together when individuals have full attention.?

Nearly all of the asynchronous communication tools we are familiar with are text based; email, instant messenger, and written docs. Yes, to an extent these can reduce the coincidence of attention problem. However, as many teams have realized, those tools leave us feeling disconnected from our colleagues. Asynchronous visual and auditory tools are also necessary.??

One option is Loom. Loom is a platform to screenshare and record a video, then share it with your team. If you need to do product demos or run through slides for your team, Loom is a good option. Another option is the tool my team and I are building; Ponder. Ponder is a platform to speak and record stories & questions, then share them with your team to get their input & feedback. If you need that auditory connection that builds psychological safety and facilitates thinking together, Ponder is a good option. Try it out immediately here - tell someone you were thinking about them and ask them what they are excited about.?

Summary

The coincidence of attention is the modern-day knowledge work equivalent of the coincidence of wants in a barter economic system. It’s insanely inefficient, but it’s familiar. People will hang on to the familiar. This doesn’t have to be true. There are tools and methods that exist right now to help the modern-day knowledge work teams build the economic system equivalent of currency. The good news is that it’s way easier for a corporate leader to try a new software solution with their team than it was for empires or countries to establish a currency (especially fiat currency!!) to act as a medium of exchange.