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How To Focus In A Time Of Coronavirus Crisis

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We are in a storm. And when the sound and fury are lashing us from all sides, the only gyroscope we have as leaders and managers is focus – ours, and our people’s.

Importantly, putting one’s undivided attention and effort into specific actions that address today’s tumultuous issues is a vital coping mechanism. We not only do better, but we feel better for intentionally focusing on what we can do as opposed to letting ourselves feel battered by the chaos that confronts us.

As an expert on attention and distraction, I can tell you that while maintaining focus is valuable when life is normal, it’s absolutely crucial in times of crisis. In the presence of a pandemic, our ability to establish and maintain our focus can increase the chance that our businesses, our communities, our families, and each of us will survive and, eventually, return to a thriving and more confident state.

Focus is a stabilizing force that leads to insight, innovation, and productivity, and those factors are accelerants for recovery. And, we are all stronger when we have control over some part of a solution, even as we are battered by the wind and water of this “perfect storm.”

So, whether you are working long hours managing an organization that provides essential services, or you are an executive vice president in charge of an isolated office in a home shared by your home-schooling kids, take a moment to grieve for the loss of "normal," and then intentionally concentrate with all your might on what lies ahead.

A GUIDE FOR ACHIEVING FOCUS IN TIMES OF CRISIS

I'd like to offer a complete, four-point guide for how to focus on what comes next: Step 1: Get clarity ; Step 2: Understand your (vital) role; Step 3: Eliminate distractions; and Step 4: Measure the results.

Today's article will outline the first, most critical step: Get Clarity. I will provide the final three steps in a follow-up article this week.

STEP 1: GET CLARITY

The first order of business in challenged times is to get clarity about the situation and what matters.

Clarity comes from a combination of these:

  • Defining the situation
  • Applying your company’s values
  • Using the most reliable data available
  • Setting and communicating concise, immediate objectives

Utilize these points of view to clear the lens through which you view a situation. Then, develop the direction in which to lead, based on an understanding and agreement about what’s necessary to ride out the storm.

Define the Situation

We can’t have clarity about a solution until we grasp and focus on the elements of the problem. Just as a storm has defined elements (wind, water, loss of power, lightning to strikes, floods, etc.), so too does any business emergency.

Especially at the onset, much of a crisis is about noise, often filtered or hyped through emotion-driven forces such as insecurity or panic. Rather than react to that fear, see and hear beyond it to define the actual elements at play, focusing on what is known or knowable, and have your team bear responsibility for collecting and vetting the data that guides you. This is important because paralysis, procrastination, and avoidance are the products of ambiguity, which makes murky nebulousness the enemy.

As an example of defining a situation, these are the known external elements of the coronavirus effects in the US as I write this article:

  • The coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19 are accelerating. So far, there is no vaccine or cure. In most areas, it is not yet possible to test the non-hospitalized population to learn who carries the virus.
  • The uncertainty of the situation caused the financial markets to react dramatically, posting historic losses.
  • Many small and medium businesses have closed or deployed their people to work in isolation or near-isolation from home. Layoffs have reached their highest-ever levels. Most schools and universities are closed, potentially until fall.
  • Except for food and basic supplies, American consumption is down. The travel and hospitality industry, and businesses that depend on it, are the hardest hit. A few sectors, such as grocers, pharmacies, and healthcare facilities, have seen a significant rise in business. Most businesses fall somewhere in between.

Every organization faces its own specific challenges, risks, and internal issues. Enumerate those for your company by recapping the principal vulnerabilities or challenges your group encounters financially, operationally, and organizationally. Pay particular attention to your relationships with customers, vendors, partners, and employees. These elements and their solutions are the points of your primary focus.

I'll use my business, Focuswise, as an example of defining internal challenges:

  • Our work, which involves speaking at conferences, in-person consulting work, and extensive travel, went from a full schedule to zero in the space of a few days. With all of our spring business transferred to fall, we had to adjust our budget very quickly.
  • Our team lost a valuable week operationally as we were initially in denial and confusion. It took a second week to get our new game plan together. We realized we were missing some collaborative tools — technology to coordinate our efforts.
  • Uncertainty reduces purchasing, and our clients stopped booking future events because they didn't — and don't yet — have enough information to make plans that involve large expenses such as hosting multi-thousand delegate conferences.
  • Additionally, some of our customers were rocked back on their heels. Many of them are large organizations that had reached historic heights in January, only to have their value cut by a third in March. Our main contacts, founders, C-level officers, and senior executives, didn't have enough information to make their next steps clear. So, we drew our solutions out of our customers' complicated issues. We adjusted our focus to provide them with tools to help them focus on leading well now.
  • In your business, follow a similar track: Identify your customers' points of pain, then drive your next moves toward solutions that matter to them and will help your customers make a difference in their situations.

As a leader or manager in this crisis, use the external and internal definitions of the situation to determine what is critical (and what might be an opportunity) for your organization in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

Apply Your Company’s Values

Company values can have incredible guiding power in these moments. They shrink the landscape of options and put parameters around the confusing and often conflicting universe of solutions. Seek your direction through the lens of those values.

If your company is founded on the concept of putting customers first, then its solution to a crisis is to consider what its customer needs and wants most.

For instance, grocery stores realized quickly that they had to provide essential goods to their communities, but part of those communities are classified as high risk and are cautioned not to enter stores. So, grocers and pharmacies have adapted to establish specific hours for seniors and other at-risk people to shop – usually the hour before the store opens to the public, after the entire store has been cleaned and restocked overnight. This is in no way convenient for stores, but the change comes directly from the companies’ values — putting their customers first.

What if your company’s value statement doesn’t exist or is inappropriate? 

Moments of crisis can also reveal when an organization's stated values do not reflect or inform their lived-out-loud behaviors. If your company finds itself in this situation, then adopt a “crisis value statement” to guide your teams. For example, if your company publishes only a platitudinous vision statement, such as “We want to be the accounting firm of choice to enterprise-level businesses,” there’s not much humanity there on which to hang a recovery project or rally the troops. So, for the duration of the emergency, such a company might adopt an emergency guideline such as “to preserve, protect, and guide our clients safely through the financial disruption of this crisis.”

Use the Most Reliable Data Available

Increasingly, commercial news media carries a bias one way or another, so to obtain reliable external data for your organization, aim for direct access to vetted sources. An excellent example of this applies to the coronavirus pandemic and the spread and size of the virus, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. As a center for both medicine and computer science, Johns Hopkins has compiled a frequently-updated coronavirus map and tally for public reference. It comes without commentary or spin – just data.

Within your own industry, look for reports that similarly strip out bias in their data and update frequently. Share that information throughout your organization so that everyone coordinates with the same data set for central decisions. Avoid data that’s provided weekly or monthly as it is almost always inaccurate at the time you need it for decisions, and it can shift your focus in the wrong direction.

Set and Communicate Concise, Immediate Objectives

Organize your response and your messaging around the imperative established by your values and your crisis plan. Give your employees clarity by having leaders speak with one voice. Broadcast a clear and actionable statement about what matters – a north star by which all staff can guide their decisions.

For example, “Stay home, stay healthy” is the directive that Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington, used to accompany his state’s stay-at-home order, which was driven by a goal of flattening the curve of coronavirus contagion. Like those in some other states, Washingtonians were told to self-isolate, work from home, and avoid contact with one another. The clarity of this communication works because of its structure: it’s brief, specific, and addresses both the “what” and the “why,” all in just four words.

In times of chaos or confusion, communications from leaders, whether in the public or private sectors, require clarity, which in turn comes from finely-tuned brevity. If the “immediate objective” message to your troops takes more than three short bullet points to spell out, then leaders should get help. Do not hesitate to conscript the best copywriter from the organization’s marketing department or ad agency to hone that message to its essential elements.

Take a day to think through the first step - Get Clarity - and begin to implement your recommendations.

In the next article, we will examine the final three steps to achieving focus in times of uncertainty and crisis.

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