Being busy: Blights and beatitudes

Focus means concentrated attention. It refers to conscious and intentional actions by a person to achieve a particular objective. One needs discipline to overcome tendencies to deviate. It is easier said than done with regard to maintaining focus.

Most of us are struggling for time. We have more to achieve than the available time. Being busy has become the order of the day for business managers. Yet, the question remains whether just being busy will bring the desired results. The answer based on global research, is a firm 'no'.

Today’s column features the facets of being busy, with emphasis on their relevance to Sri Lanka.

Professors Heike Bruch of University of Saint Gallon, Switzerland and Sumantra Ghoshal of London Business School did extensive research on the performance of managers on a global scale.

They surveyed more than 10,000 managers across the globe with regard to the way they spend time. They identified focus and energy as two key factors that contribute to the way managers achieve results.

Focus

Focus means concentrated attention. It refers to conscious and intentional actions by a person to achieve a particular objective. One needs discipline to overcome tendencies to deviate.

It is easier said than done with regard to maintaining focus. Henry Mintzberg, a veteran management scholar discussed this in his book, The Nature of Managerial Work. Managers must typically work on a variety of tasks simultaneously and rely on their colleagues to complete a job.

Maintaining focus can be very challenging in some situations. It can be a case of e-mails or females. Ensuring concentration without getting confused is what is needed.

Going deeper, focus is associated with the state of mind. In Zen Buddhism, it says your mind is like a 'drunken monkey'.

Meditation helps you to tie it up to a tree so that mind and body are intact.

All great religions have spoken about the need to focus on material and non-material needs. In a competitive business world, power of focus has become valuable as never before. It applies to Sri Lankan managers as well.

Energy

Energy means a variety of things. For our discussion, it can be regarded as a level of personal involvement that that is more than just doing something. It also implies effort, fuelled by external or internal factors. As Bruch and Ghoshal further elaborate, energy is what pushes managers to walk the extra mile, in overcoming obstacles and meeting tight timelines.

This type of energy cannot be obtained simply by consuming 'energy drinks'. It requires a whole-hearted effort with dedication. There are many success stories of such energy in action. Committed managers working on an important project with tight targets and time frames is one such case in point.

Bruch and Ghoshal relate the story of the Sony Vaio computer, a first from Sony to integrate a variety of digital technologies, as a case of energy into results.

Responding to CEO Nobuyuki Idei's challenge to create an integrated technological playground for a burgeoning generation of 'digital dream kids', Hiroshi Nakagawa and his team put in 100-hour weeks to create the kind of breakthrough product Idei hoped for.

One manager, Kazumasa Sato, was so devoted to the project that he spent every weekend for three years conducting consumer reconnaissance in electronics shops. Sato's research into consumer buying patterns helped Sony develop a shop layout that enhanced traffic flow and by extension, sales. In the end, the Vaio captured a significant share of the Japanese PC market.

Sri Lankan managers have demonstrated energy in many projects, and software development for global firms can be one such example. However, overall status of managers demonstrating energy can still be improved a lot.

Enhancing focus and energy

Let’s start with focus. It needs work in two aspects, physical and mental. For me, physical distractions are easy to overcome. Planning the work and choosing a conducive environment are some of the actions. The mental front is the more difficult one to confront. Mindfulness is one very effective practice to maintain focus. Psychologists call this, “present moment living”.

Once we learn to drop the two heavy suitcases in our hands, one called the past, the other the future, we will focus better on the present, in truly experiencing what Eckhart Tolle, an authority on spirituality, called, 'the power of now'.

With regard to energy, it is all about balance. Mid-body balance, work-family balance, strategic-operational balance, thinking-doing balance are some of the manifestations. Energy is a culmination of a variety of factors such as being fit, cheerful, passionate and committed. One needs to work on it continuously to maintain a high level of energy.

Way forward

As we have seen so far, simply being busy will not produce results. Being busy has its blights and beatitudes. Having the right blend of focus and energy would ensure purposefulness in words and deeds. Sri Lankan managers need to enhance the twin characteristics of focus and energy to reap the beatitudes of a purpose driven life.

Such individual actions with interactive team efforts would result in institutional progress. This, in turn will pave the way for the nation’s forward path, with purposeful managers spearheading purposeful growth and prosperity.