I love the Schuitema thematic! Everything is paradoxical and things that we have taken as fact are quickly turned on their head. But even within the thematic, things are not always as they seem and concepts that seemed fairly easy to grasp reveal a subtlety that require continued intellectual bandwidth – in short, it is hard, even impossible, to put this to bed and say you have mastered it.
We spent a day with the Schuitema team discussing two of the key concepts in the thematic: Intent and how it related to Attention.
For those unfamiliar with the thematic, we argue that every situation presents you with the option to engage with the other on the basis of your intent: what you want to get or what you can give. As I teach classes, I tell delegates that they have the choice to either give me their attention, or think about how they can get out of this class. In a sense, we can think about our Intent as giving significance to the Other (everything and everyone around us), or thinking about one’s own needs and significance. We see those as here to give as those who have a benevolent intent. Those who are here to get have a malevolent intent.
Giving, however, does not mean being nice – it means being appropriate. To give something can mean being generous (e.g. I gave a sandwich to a starving child and it requires me to overcome a loss of something), however, I can also give of myself in a courageous manner (e.g. Overcoming the fear to go on a triple loop roller coaster requires me to overcome a potential loss of self).
Further, being generous does not mean being nice (the generosity of the surgeon’s knife) nor does it mean being courageous means being hard (being vulnerable with someone).
Being inappropriate means that we are focused on our own needs. Smacking the kid who asks for food as an expression of courage would just be selfish, while giving away your ticket to the roller coaster ride in the name of generosity would actually be cowardice.
Giving means staying focused on what we can do in a benevolent way in every situation, even if that means submitting ourselves in either a generous or courageous way.
What we get is the result, but what we give is the process. Intent, at its core, therefore, is future focused, because it has a result in mind, even if that result is benevolent. Since a result is what we get, and we don’t have control over what we get, it is quite conceivable, and often happens, that we give and don’t get the result we want.
I give the hungry kid a sandwich, because I don’t want him to be hungry anymore, but I might find the kid has a mild allergy to peanuts and he throws it all up (whoops!). I ride the roller coaster, because I want to overcomes fear of heights, but find that I have an allergy to heights (and throw up all over my partner – double whoops, but serves them right for making me do something I told them I couldn’t!).
Attention, on the other hand is focused on the here and now and is not focused on an outcome. As I make a sandwich, I pay attention to spreading the peanut butter evenly, that the jam doesn’t overflow and that the slices of bread are evenly matched (there are, after all, certain standards that need to be met of a sandwich, even if only for a vagrant child).
While buying my roller coaster ticket, I wait in line patiently, resist the urge to have a panic attack and thank the cashier for helping me. In short, attention is doing what is right in the moment regardless of outcome. Attention is about the appropriate action in the moment.
In a business context, intent, or result, is akin to strategy. We know where we want to go, but it sits in the future and is beyond our control. We fail to achieve our strategies because we fail to execute properly. Execution is a matter of action, a matter of what we pay attention to. We fail to achieve, because we are not focused on what sits in our hands right now, and worry about what sits beyond our control. Per the old saying, one in the hand (what is in our control) is worth ten in the bush (what is beyond our control).
By paying attention to the process, we will usually get a result. Not always, but by doing things right, our chances are greatly improved. As Arnold Palmer said, ‘the more I practice, the luckier I get’.
And so the great paradox is that while intent has an outcome in mind and attention doesn’t, it is actually our attention that is most responsible for the final result.
The implications for any organisation, from household to multi-national are this: stop thinking so much about your long range strategy and focus on what sits in your hand right now. What are your standards for your processes, and what are you doing to consistently raise them? How are you empowering employees in times of economic downturn? How is the CEO spending time on the floor dealing with customers when there are so many other things that need to be done. Resist the temptation to do what contemporary wisdom tells you. Do the right things, and things will be right!