I was watching my 3-year-old nephew one afternoon. He was childing (the natural act of being a child) quite nicely. Because he wanted to play alone, I gave him his space. That's the setup.
Now, of course, I made sure I kept track of what he was doing and what things he was doing things to. Every 30 seconds or so I’d look up to see what he was doing.
That was not an appropriate frame rate. In an environment of hundreds of nooks, crannies and objects, any one of which can catch his attention combined with the agility of his small body and his recent mastery of walking…he can get into quite a bit of trouble in 30 seconds. And thus the entertainment center was in peril.
What did I learn?
Jack up my frame rate to 10 seconds when the nephew's in the den.
Outside in the backyard? I can limit the frame rate down to nearly a minute…nearly.
Speaking of the backyard.
Grass grows. But we can't see it happening. It's too slow for us to notice.
The reason we can make the assessment the grass needs cutting is that the rate at which we pay attention to it is more on the bi-weekly side. But, imagine if you checked on the grass hourly? Would that not drive you mad? Would it not be a waste of time and attention?
Just as in watching toddlers play and grass grow - there's an appropriate frame rate for managing people and projects.
How do you know your frame rate is too fast? What happens?
Anxious or uncertain business owners OVER check on activities. It can begin to look a bit like OCD. The problem is you’re not only receiving incorrect information, but you’re infecting the working relationships you have with your employees and colleagues.
1. You become blind (mentally filtering out the valuable)
When you keep checking and checking you're taking in too much information. Your brain starts filtering things out…these things it filters are whatever doesn’t seem to change. Unfortunately, when your frame rate is too high, it’s a crap shoot whether what you filter out is actually important.
Think of it this way. You may be anxious, but your brain gets bored...and misses stuff.
2. You see ghosts, irrelevant things mask themselves as relevant.
Things move and change for no apparent or long term purpose. Watch a person waiting for a bus. They are a blur of motion. Their main goal is to get on the bus when it comes. But they scratch, adjust their posture, stretch, alter their breathing rate, look around, etc… If getting on the bus was the important activity, all this other activity are pointless things to track.
You can also experience an echo chamber. Every time you check on something you create ripples of impact with your employees. But…what if you come back BEFORE the ripples have gone? You’ll come back to see your former ripples, but take them to be changes that you need to adjust to. You start rippling your own ripples. Now you have waves and soon a crisis…all your doing. And you thought you were managing people.
3. You try to force things - make things happen when they can't or shouldn't.
Because you’re paying too much attention there is an inherent pull toward action. Well at this frame rate things move glacially. Imagine trying to watch an oak tree growing...in super slow motion. It’ll take years of viewing before you see anything even start to happen. You’d start to think something’s wrong. The tree is supposed to be growing, right?
With a bent toward action you'll make up an excuse to do something when, perhaps, nothing is the appropriate course of action.
This is why the more anxious you are, the more you will tend toward TOO fast a frame rate.
What is fear?
Simply this - it’s a signal that we MAY need to pay more attention to something.
We may need it to be at a higher or the highest priority.
Right now, it might be very important.
That's it. That's all fear's about.
But we take it too far. Instead of moving something up our attention buffer we allow it to take over the entire buffer. It starts to push out everything else we could be more profitably paying attention to.
Now it's always on our minds. We have to return to it again and again. And so...we start to micromanage.
Micromanaging is TOO high a frame rate brought on by fear.
Frame Limiting
How do you slow your frame rate down?
Get a good definition of what's REALLY relevant.
- Ask yourself, what is it you're really after?
- Ask yourself - what are you mistakenly focused on?
- What does it mean if you get more of what you are mistakenly focused upon…rather than what you really want?
For example. You may be mistakenly focused on views on a a webpage. But, what you really want are conversions. Yes, it takes a view to make a conversion, but you can get millions of views and no conversions.
You can mistakenly be focused on numbers of hours worked on a project. What you really want is the project getting done, on time, with the right quality. Yes, it takes time for projects to get done, but you can have people work insane hours and not move one inch towards completion.
Figure out what you’re really afraid of…it’s deeper than your first impressions. Follow the chain a little.
Here's an example of a chain...1) I’m afraid they’ll input the information wrong. 2) The client will see the wrong information and think we’re incompetent. 3) The client will then take away their account. 4) They will also bad mouth us on social media. 5) This will trigger other clients to leave. 6) This will also nudge prospects away.
Okay…and this was a real fear of a client. What does this reveal? What may be MORE valuable for you to do? Improve your process by adding a checklist. But also, it shows you think your relationship with the client is too tenuous, too transactional. Maybe some effort needs to go into improving the relationship. Both of those are way more valuable and strategic than checking in every hour.
Figure out what type of information is deceptive or vanity.
This is a hugely valuable exercise. When you know what is noise you significantly reduce complexity, general cognitive fatigue and reduce mistakes all around.
Test things out.
Halve your frame rate. Talk to your staff..."I've been micromanaging this. Don't let me check in until Wednesday unless the client calls or our numbers are 25% off normal."
Create a challenging compromise.
Have a conversation. How often do you want to check in? How often do they want to be monitored? Find a rate in between those two. Put it as a challenge for the both of you. They have to be on their game more than they are comfortable with. You have to trust the situation (okay, it is them, but it's the situation too) more than you are comfortable with. Both of you are challenged to grow here. Then, here's the really helpful part. Each of you explains one thing drives you nuts and you want the other person to pay extra attention to it. Now both of you are challenged to grow, in a safe way, and the main thing you hate is handled respectfully by both sides.
Make sure your environment does not stimulate the checks...
Our environment shapes us much more than we shape it.
- Block your email, check your email on a specific schedule.
- Remove notifications, use Do Not Disturb (set a reminder to turn it back on).
- Have information flow through someone else as a gatekeeper.
- Create a game where the information source only has to give you the information at certain times - fun penalties if they don't. This can be a bet.
If you know you really shouldn't check, but you really really want to...you have an addiction problem. Don’t feed the beast.
- Go do something that requires you to have your full attention on the outside world (as opposed to your inside world that is in an addictive mode). Batting Cages. Drive go carts. Play a sport. Play a new video game. Play a board game. Watch a movie in a foreign language.
- Go for a walk looking for the color blue, don't stop until you've reached 100. No seriously, getting your brain involved in the world outside your in your head thinking relieves that pressure and builds neural pathways that help you long term.
END OF PART I. PART II: When we need to pay more attention...Frame Jacking.