Attention Blog

Attention, like most things, can be measured in a variety of ways; how much, accuracy, level of precision, etc.  Study is advancing very quickly in this area and has shown that most of us can’t pay attention longer than 40 minutes.  Brains tend shut off and try something new at that point if they haven’t already been interrupted and lost 15 min by then.

From a business perspective, you should be interested in what employees pay attention to about their job and to what degree.  Are they thinking about leaving for another company?  Which competitor and how much of the time do they do this?  Do they care about the important project?  How much and for the right reasons?

Using the 3 different aspects of attention as variables (Part 1: What is Attn?) we can begin to map the responses according to attention type.  A neat way to accomplish this was pioneered by Accenture for the AttentionScape explained in the book Attention Economy.  Designed for groups, they had survey takers decide on a single response for a given subject.  They choose their response from the 6 available below.

1. I really concentrated on this; spending quality time on it.
2. I’m excited by this; it is something that makes me happy.
3. I did not feel like I could avoid this; it was necessary or imperative.
4. I might have suffered negative consequences had I not paid attention to this; it was no necessarily positive
5. This was on my mind but at a subconscious level; I didn’t really have to concentrate on it.
6. I chose to focus on this; it was voluntary.

Each response affects the 3 attention aspects in different ways, and with multiple responses averaged, you would start to see where a group’s attention is relative to each other.  For example, let’s say you have an entire department that responds “b” and “f” to an inquiry.  Great, you have an excited group focusing voluntarily on a project for positive attention.  On the other hand, do they have other responsibilities?  Are those getting lost amidst all the excitement and front-of-the-mind bandwidth?  Do they need to be reminded about how important timely TPS reports are?

With this set up, you can ask about multiple subjects floating around the office.  Throw in some questions regarding productivity and suddenly you have a tool showing you what the most successful in the office people pay attention too…  Next post soon.