Attention Matrix: Activity Focus

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This week we’ll move on to the second quadrant, which is also not desirable: the activity focus quadrant. Activity focus is the byproduct of good attention but attention on activities that contribute little value to a role or the organization.

In the distracted quadrant, we learned that people bounce from one shiny object to the next, never really accomplishing anything. As we discussed last week, that is usually the result of a management team’s chasing the latest and greatest miracle cure.

Organizations end up in the activity focus quadrant when too little time is spent up-front to determine what will produce value. Instead the managers pick a few easy tasks to focus their time and attention on, often convincing themselves that sheer action will produce positive results. What’s frustrating about this quadrant is that success at the task level does not bring success at the role or organizational levels.

At the risk of offending some organizations, we’ll offer one such example: measuring average call time in a call center. Average call time, or ACT, is an easy and tempting measurement for call centers. The premise is simple: calls cost money; therefore, it’s good to handle customer calls quickly. If calls can be dealt with in less time, then more calls can be handled by fewer representatives at a lower cost. All good, right?

Not so fast.

If short calls are good, then really short calls are even better. So call center representatives are given incentives to make their calls as short as possible. All of a sudden, representatives are curt, calls are mysteriously dropped or transferred, customer requests are short-circuited, and customer satisfaction decreases. The ACT is low, but so too are sales and customer retention.

So management focuses its attention on and measures something that is easily assessed but doesn’t deliver real value. Performers follow the management’s lead and deliver exactly what is expected: short, ineffective calls that not only fail to retain customers but also all too often push customers away.

Performers turn their scarce attention to areas of performance that are unlikely to produce real value. They produce what they are asked for, but those goals don’t really matter.

Next week we’ll look at what happens when we first figure out what matters, but then don’t properly focus our attention on those things: the missed opportunity quadrant.

Question to ponder:

• Are you focusing on and measuring activities that are easy but carry no evidence of being linked to performance?