People’s attention spans just ain’t what they used to be. I used to blame it on those damn Millenials but I’m now convinced that it’s so much more pervasive than that. My latest theory is that we’ve descended into a world that revolves around sound bites, the ability to download and watch an entire TV series in a single session, highlights packages, long weekends instead of two week vacations, easy credit that let’s us buy everything we want whether we can afford it or not, fast food, fast fashion, boot camps and every other manner of short cut that you can imagine. No one has to ‘stay the course’ any more.
Nowhere does the trend toward short attention spans hurt more than in business. Some of the ways it negatively affects us include:
- Reduced employee tenure – I’ve just hired a senior employee. This is a significant role and I expected to get applications from people with good track records in solid businesses. What I got was hundreds of resumes from people – predominantly under 30 – with good degrees from great schools and a track record of changing jobs every six months or less. This is consistent with the most recent research – NO ONE stays anywhere very long any more. As soon as they get bored – or pissed off about something – they bolt. And, since they ALL do it, it’s no longer much of a disadvantage – except for businesses. How do you succeed in business if your HR resembles a revolving door
- Failed projects – Any project manager understands how difficult it is to get team members to stay on track. Most project failures relate, in some way, to scope creep. And most scope creep, at a basic level, relates to people who can’t stay focused. And the inability to stay focused almost always comes back to a deficient attention span. And it’s getting worse by the year. Who would be a project manager these days?
- Poor execution – Every good strategy, every killer app, every genius plan relies on great execution. Everyone needs to carry out their piece of the plan – whether it’s sexy or not – and they need to keep their head down and their bum up (Americans can keep their butts up if they prefer) until the job gets done. These days, people want to wander off and do something more interesting or, some cases, someone else’s job. The ability to stick with it is a dying art and, as a result, execution isn’t as good as it used to be and, because of that, more strategies and plans fail.
This isn’t one of those preachy blog posts where I lay out the problem and then present the easy-peasy three step solution. I don’t have a solution and the, the way the world is tending, it’s only going to get worse.
My personal solution is to stick with those few people who still have attention spans longer than their noses. Obviously, WordPress has precious few of those people based on their inability to address basic issues in this platform that constantly plague bloggers like me.
Now…..what was I saying again??
david chaulk 