Our Company Has ADD!

Over the past two decades there has been an explosion of diagnosis, treatment and research regarding Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD. Although most people focus on the issue with children, many experts believe it is just as prevalent, but undiagnosed in adults. According to David Giwerc MCC (Master Certified Coach, and the Founder of the ADD Coach Academy http://www.addca.com ) ADD in adults is often characterized by the following behaviors (abbreviated list):

• Easily distracted – always having something new to think about.
• Starts several projects at the same time, may not complete any of them.
• Distorted sense of time. For example, will spend hours in an activity without realizing how much time has actually passed.

For the last several years, we have often talked about writing a book titled “Our Company Has ADD”, as we have observed a significant number of organizations that have all the characteristics listed above.  With very good intentions, organizations kick off countless initiatives intended to make them more competitive, more efficient, and more profitable.  In a recent assignment we worked on, the client had more than a dozen major initiatives going on at the same time centered on working capital; pricing; productivity improvements; procurement; performance metrics; back-office consolidation…. just to name a few! 

Working on this many projects at the same time guarantees that many of them will not get completed, they’ll take much longer than planned, and they will not result in the benefits originally anticipated. In these situations, we almost always observe that employees have feelings of frustration, and of being overloaded as they waste their energy and talent, getting more and more buried under unfinished projects.  So what can organizations do?  The answers are easy to figure out, but incredibly difficult to implement.

The first step is prioritization.  No matter how large or complicated an organization is, there cannot be 12 priorities.  We have always felt that irregardless of an organization’s size – two or three company-wide priorities (and therefore initiatives) are about right. Pick the projects with the highest value, while quickest to implement, first. Once those are done, you can move down the list towards those with high payback, but difficult to do. Strategic, company-changing projects are important, of course – but not if they drain all the company’s resources and take too long to complete and pay off. 
 
The second step is focus.  Too many organizations get 70% of the way through and move on to another issue. If you picked the right project in the first place, stay the course and see the project to completion – then start another.  Also, be sure to give employees the right tools to get the project done and time to work on it.  Nothing says “…. this is unimportant” to an organization better than not allowing them to the have the right tools and resources at their disposal when assigned to one of these projects.   
 
The final step is communication.  It’s an overused cliché, but people want to know why they are working on something and what benefits the organization will see from their efforts.  It’s a lot easier to communicate in a clear and straightforward way about two or three key initiatives, than it is about a dozen!!  We have figured out that at the point we think we have over communicated a project’s importance and the reasons behind undertaking it; we need to do a little more.  

In this economy, staffs have been pared down and organizations need to have a laser-like focus on what is important.  Don’t let your organization’s ADD get in the way of getting the things done – prioritize, focus and communicate!

One final note.One of our favorite business bloggers in the vast internet universe is Tim Walker at Hoover’s Business Insight Zone.  All of his stuff is great, but of particular interest has been his “simplify” kick for the last few weeks.  He has written a number of terrific pieces that deal with this same topic of personal and organizational overload.  If you have a chance, you need to check out his stuff at http://www.hooversbiz.com/.