The Performance Culture

CHAPTER 3Start with Awareness

Where are you paying attention?

We’ve all got a lot going on. Working life is full of things to address, and each of those things can be addressed in a seemingly infinite number of ways. What’s most important: making your boss happy, job-crafting the role of your dreams, maximizing efficiency, showing up for your employees, playing the political game, or ensuring you’re well-liked? Even as we narrow our focus from the limitless number of topics to focus exclusively on people and teams, the possibilities for where to invest our attention can at times seem overwhelming. People from all corners of the organization will make the case that their challenges deserve the highest priority and most immediate attention. While this exercise of prioritization is ultimately up to you, I do want to highlight that two of the biggest risks leaders consistently face are wasting effort by doing the wrong things, and not accounting for the unintended consequences of the actions they take, even when they’re doing the right things. Your ability to minimize these risks will put you in the best possible position to gain people’s cooperation and sponsorship as you seek to make changes to the organization.

On the first risk, spending time doing the “wrong things” comes with opportunity costs – the energy, time, and resources spent in one place are energy, time, and resources inherently not spent in other places. When we do one thing, we must account for the missed opportunity ...