We are exposed to 3500 advertisements a day.
The internet has put a wealth of distractions at our fingertips.
The Bright Shiny Object (BSO) Syndrome is a term I use for how we have been trained to be distracted by new stimulus. As I sit here at my work desk typing this I have Twitter open, Gmail open, playing music on Pandora, my Bluetooth in my ear, and Yahoo messenger open (which is use as my interoffice communication.) The Twitter has a bird tweet sound every time someone I follow “tweets.” After an hour of using the new twitter app I had to find how to turn off the sound because I felt I was working in a bird sanctuary! It’s so easy for us to be distracted at work and we expect work to be just as interactive and exciting as the news stories that arrive every minute from your personalized Google Desktop to your Crackberry phone.
With all of these desired distractions calling on our attention, and with work being such a grind in the eyes of most employees, it begs the question: Are we just so unproductive that our work ethic created our own recession? This doesn’t even include the distractions that are not desired BSOs. Time spent in meetings, gossiping about co-workers, scrambling to read or produce meaningless reports and the general chit chat that goes on in the workplace. Kind of makes you wonder how we get anything done!
Recently, a fellow speaker who loves to write established a writer’s marathon day. Colleagues came to a room with their laptops and spend 8 hours uninterrupted -- just writing. Imagine the work that could get done! Imagine the creativity that could pour forth. Imagine how surprised some participants were when after an hour their brain was tired and looking for distractions?
This is where our workforce has landed. We lack the ability of long-term focus. We lack the intent to be maniacal about our jobs (with the exceptions being entrepreneurs and those in love with the projects they are working on.) Generally speaking, the workforce is not engaged. When the workforce is going through the motions of the job without real mental engagement productivity and quality fail. Organizations lose profitability, cut labor which only increases the distractions and unlike the 80’s these employees are not capable of picking up the duties of those laid off so there is virtually no savings.
So what do you do?
1. Create your own BSO!
The reason something is a desired distraction is because it is deemed worthy of my attention. It either excites me on some level or I feel compelled to be in the know about it. How can you create that excitement in the workplace? Side note: Baby Boomer executives typically resist this effort because their thinking is “work is work” and you shouldn’t have to appeal to trying to bother make anyone excited about their jobs. If this is a familiar thought in your mind you have two options. Stay in your current mindset and be frustrated at the new ways of the current workforce.
Quit your managerial position and become an entrepreneur, or shift to the required thinking of today’s business climate: Create excitement by first asking the employees what can be done to get them excited and create a desire within themselves to get personally involved. Today’s workers like pet projects, they like to know the difference they are making on an individual basis and they want to be associated with something that has significant appeal.
2. Get them bought in – literally
Employees today need to have input and feedback on how things are going with the organization. So why not make them part of the bottom line. Profit sharing and incentive pay are not new ideas, but they can be handled in a new way. Be transparent and show them what’s going on. When the company makes profits, the employees share in those profits. When the company loses month during a month the employees are asked for suggestions on how to turn things around. By getting them so involved they take on the attitude of being entrepreneurial they are creating their own BSOs that will give them something to focus on. If you have a technical issue you can’t resolve, find the resident geek squad and put them on it. If you have a service problem, get the employees who are people-people involved. Whatever you can do to get them involved and bought in, the less the desired distractions become desire able.
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