Michelle N Moore's Agility Narrative on the Battle for Attention

Michelle shared her story of going behind the iron curtain visiting East Germany as a 16 year old and wanting to become a spy. Disillusioned by a CIA job fair decided to be a management consultant and worked with PwC and E&Y in Russia.

Her protagonist for her agility narrative is a caring leader that sought for the team high performance and high well being. The theme was about breaking through the iron curtain  of oppressive technology that seemed to eat attention and oppressive leadership to recover from stress.   The villain was largely tech that focused on stealing our attention. Her hope for the future is that we will be the masters of our tools again and that we as humans will continue to be as creative, as innovative and as magnificent as we are able to be without compromising our own well-being.

Learn about Michelle's perspective on  the battle for attention.  

Transcript

The Agility Narrative - Michelle N Moore with Martin and Satish

Martin: [00:00:00] 

Welcome to the Agility podcast series. Hi, Michelle. We're really pleased to welcome you to the agility narratives where we talk to change makers about their journey, the challenges they see and how they look to help organizations address them in each narrative, which gives us insight to part of the whole. Michelle, in your practice, you help teams in organizations go from exhausted to energized. That's not a simple transformation. You've been on quite a journey yourself and not only geographically, but also in how you approach your work. Can you give us a little of your history and tell us how you approach the consulting roles you do and what is your work?

Michelle: [00:00:44] 

Thank you, Martin. Of course, and thank you, Satish. It's nice to see both of you this morning in Canada. So, yes, Martin, first, I think the short summary of what is my work, so I help innovative executives take their knowledge worker teams from exhausted to energize. So very specifically, knowledge worker teams, people who think primarily for a living, that's how they create value in the world. And we know that they are burned out. And I do that by facilitating work design that protects and harnesses attention, which I believe is an asset more valuable than money. And so I'm a management consultant. I've been a management consultant for a long time, and I think the story behind, you know, why did I become a management consultant begins in East Berlin. So when I was 16, I went on my first trip to what lies beyond the Iron Curtain behind the Iron Curtain. At the time, my mother escaped from East Germany as a child, and we went back so she could see a school friend on a day pass, right? It was still you had to go on a day pass, and I was so intrigued by this 

[00:02:00] 

scary thing. This darkness in East Berlin, this Iron Curtain stuff that in that moment here I'm 16, right? I'm like, I'm going to be a spy. I like this adventure. I want to be a spy. So I decided to study Russian and and I really was serious about being a spy.

Michelle: [00:02:18] 

I went to the University of Texas, studied Russian, and what happened was I went to a career fair for the CIA in my first year freshman in college, and I was so disheartened by this culture of the CIA and also realizing that I think I'm just a big chicken. I don't think I could be a spy. And so I had to shift. And what do you do when you can't be aspire? You're too chicken to be a spy. You become a management consultant because you get to you get to do similar things, you get international travel. You get to, you know, not spy on people, but you get to your curiosity is constantly fed because you get to investigate organization, solve problems, look at things, interview people and dig around an organizational mess and try to help it. So so that is the backstory as to why I'm so interested in attention is because I'm a multitasking addict and I have been my whole life. So this is, I think, a problem that just got worse in the last 10 years with the with the rise of the smartphone. And because I know starting in my 20s and, you know, in a career at Price Waterhouse and then PricewaterhouseCoopers, we were rewarded for multitasking. I hired people because they were good multitaskers, but that's that's what I do. And that's that's the why.

Satish: [00:03:42]

 That's an amazing journey, Michelle. That is a good topic and amazing the way you have transitioned from being a spy to what you have been doing now. So you use the word attention, which is 

[00:04:00] 

very unique. It's great fun, just a feeling of focus on energy and expectations. And I imagine each person being highly attentive. And with that, the possibility possibilities for the people and organizations to achieve great things seems to be huge and this goes missing in many of the designs, many of the planning. So what does attention mean to you and why didn't focus on attention in particular?

Michelle: [00:04:30] 

Being a multitasking addict, I became curious about this. Balance between attention and distraction and attention is a function of the body, whereas focus is a learned skill and an act of will so we can train focus through meditation. But we know we have a tension when we are in our bodies and it's akin to metabolism. Metabolism converts food into energy, and attention is the mechanism by which the brain harnesses or directs resources. And so I focus on maybe a bit of the fear factor with executives. Do you worry about the shrinking brain in your team? Do you know that every notification, every distraction causes our prefrontal cortex to shrink? Is that good for innovation? So, so that's my definition of attention.

Martin: [00:05:27] 

Can you tell us more about the the balance and the attention and how you incorporate work design into that dynamic?

Michelle: [00:05:37]

 Sure. So I created something I'm calling the attention asset model, and this is a path for executives to use on their own or using facilitation services that I provide to design work that brings in the right balance on all of those elements in the workplace that impact our attention. And 

[00:06:00] 

everything is there's not a bad or good here. Balance is, is I use this word balance because we can have, you know, we can't be focused all the time. We have to have some rest. And so there's this idea of balance throughout, and there are five elements that impact our attention in the workplace and in our personal lives, frankly, too. But I focus on the workplace and these are focus. This skill, our ability to concentrate is number one. Number two, the culture of our teams, of our organization impacts our attention positively and or negatively. Then there's this balance in general. And when I say balance in terms of the attention asset model, what is our balance between tapping into wisdom versus intelligence? What is our balance between human interaction and virtual digital interaction? What is our balance between rest and work? What is our balance between body and mind? Because all of these things impact our degree of homeostasis in in the workplace and directly, all of these things directly impact our attention.

Michelle: [00:07:12] 

So that's that's the balance piece. And so the first three elements of the attention, asset model, focus, culture and balance, I call those the invisible elements. They are the less tangible things. We can't see them so much. We can see them in behaviors. But but they're less tangible. We can't touch them as easily as we can. The other two elements of the attention asset model, which are tools and environment and tools and environment, are what most people are talking about these days. People that are in my line of work, how do we improve productivity? And they're important, but I think they're easier to tackle. I've always done system implementations, right? It's easy to focus on the tech and kind of have the people part be lagging 

[00:08:00] 

because it's harder. It's harder to manifest good human behavior than it is to configure a system. And so these these last two elements of tools and environment are much easier to tackle. But it's that holistic approach to how do we design work that protects and harnesses attention if it's not a holistic look at the entire pie that impacts our attention, then we can't design it properly.

Martin: [00:08:33]

So I can imagine being an executive listening to you, Michelle, it sounds great. Where do I start? What do I do like? It sounds, as you say, intangible how you approach a leader that's going to go. It's very touchy feely stuff. And how do I actually make real benefits out of this?

Michelle: [00:08:51] 

That's a great question because I begin even before I begin working with the team. I start with the attention audit, so simply gathering data. A 50 question survey that the whole team does 10 questions per each of the five elements that I mentioned. And then they get an idea of their current state. And what is most interesting is this year and the attention audits that I've that I've done with clients is they notice the contradiction in answers, so they'll answer questions in the area of focus and answer questions in the area of tools, and the answers will completely contradict each other. So when we start working together after we know the current state, we have this baseline from some data, just from 50 questions that the whole team does. We have the collective data and we know what is the current state of your strengths as a team and harnessing attention. And then we can focus on or design the work project to just focus on the weakest ones or to to do the whole the whole bit. But what is interesting 

[00:10:00]

is people are really surprised by how low the scores are and by these contradictions. So the next step is we have some interesting facilitated conversations with the team to really talk about these contradictions and understand, well, what do you want to co-create right now? What as a team do you want to co-create? How do you want to move forward in which of these? What's the low hanging fruit where you can have a quick win so you don't get bogged down in another huge change project? So that's the starting point.

Martin: [00:10:31] 

When you say that to the executives, what's the reaction, what are people willing to go forward with that experiment? What's the reactions, mix of reactions that you're getting?

Michelle: [00:10:40] 

So when they see the data, it is quite compelling, and executives who are interested in this are those that care about team well-being. They're really feeling already before they even talk to me. They're feeling the pain points of burnout. We're already hearing about the great resignation as well, that that is all around in the tech world and this fight for talent. So there's this huge concern of how can I make my corporate culture or my organizational culture different, also to attract talent and stop losing people. And this is a way also to differentiate from the competition. So two drivers right now that I'm seeing for people wanting to do this work is the exhaustion or the burnout and the overtime, the realization that over time, although we're all here in the knowledge worker world, right, overachievers and but realizing that it's not sustainable. And so that's a driver and this driver to retain and attract talent. And how can I do something different?

Martin: [00:11:45] 

Agile can be implemented and be a pretty intense process. Teams have to deliver working software every two weeks. There's often high level focus and stress around team performance, where 

[00:12:00] 

leaders want more and not always understanding all of the intricacies of development and timing and flow and get frustrated. This can create tension. People start tracking output rather than outcomes. I'm not sure if it's physical exhaustion or mental exhaustion in your narrative around taking teams that go from exhausted to energized. Can you talk a little bit about some of your experience, maybe working with agile teams or similar type teams who are very delivery focused?

Michelle: [00:12:31] 

I've worked with many, many implementation teams trying to get to a goal alive for a software implementation, and the challenge is if you ask about the protagonist right in this agility narrative, I think the protagonist is the caring executive who sees and is worried about the well-being of the team. And that is the only type of executive that will actually pause to ask the team, how are you feeling, what is happening? Because if you don't have that mindset in the executive, there's no way to balance out this output and outcomes. And this great exhaustion in your example, agile teams are feeling unless the executive cares both about performance, success and about well-being. So I'm very clear with the type of people that I work with, because if it's not a caring executive, there is no point in doing this work.

Martin: [00:13:41] 

Thank you. You've defined a really interesting protagonist as the person at the center of the story is this caring, caring leader? What would you say the theme of the agility narrative would be?

Michelle: [00:13:57] 

You're going to laugh. I'm going to say it's the Iron Curtain. 

[00:14:00] 

I spent 15 years in Russia in the management consulting practice of TWC and Ernst and Young. So of course, the theme is Let's break down the Iron Curtain. Let's let's get some freedom from this oppressive technology and this oppressive behavior that we've all gotten ourselves into in the age of the smartphone. That's that's going to be the theme.

Martin: [00:14:24] 

Tell me of this Iron Curtain. What percentage would you say was tack? And what percentage would be mindset and behavior?

Michelle: [00:14:34]

I can only guess based on experience, I don't have any data on this, I think behavior and mindset are overwhelmingly the harder nuts to crack because tools are easier to configure or take action. Put your smartphone outside of your bedroom when you're sleeping. The mindset and behaviors related to working in Slack, one of my clients says we have slack on crack. With that, we have this, this this unwritten rule that we think we have to do instant response in our internal messaging and with clients external messaging as well. So this there's this cultural behavior that has emerged out of nowhere. No one wrote a policy that said you have to respond instantly in 99 Slack or team channels, but people have fear of missing out, especially working remotely. They have this belief or this. They think the team has the mindset. If I'm not in here contributing data right then, then I'm not going to be visible or not appreciated. So I think those behaviors related to how we relate and interact with our tools and these strange, unwritten rules that have appeared in the last two to three years in particular around how we communicate and when something is emergency and when it isn't. That is the tough part.

Martin: [00:15:59]

Slack is 

[00:16:00]

maybe one of the worst offenders or messaging or

Michelle: [00:16:02] 

Any instant technologies. I think it's any instant messaging because we behave the same way as humans in how we interact in these channels. So it doesn't matter if you're using Slack or teams or another tool to do your instant messaging. But this always on culture, and especially with with the hardest, is working with teams in different time zones because people are awake at different times. But maybe if you're in Toronto and your team member in India responded to a message in the middle of the night, maybe you feel anxious, even though you know it was your middle of the night. You don't have to respond immediately, but you see that message when you wake up in the morning and you think, Oh, I better answer, especially if that person is hierarchically above you or something. And so it is it is getting the team together and talking openly and collaboratively deciding what works best for us. How do we protect our attention? How do we value our attention like money for each other? How do we value each other's time? I've never seen a policy that says, Oh, we're going to value each other's time, and this is how we're going to do it. This is how it manifests in our realization. Have you seen that? I think that's what we desperately need. This open conversation about how we're going to behave and protect attention for each other, not just for sustained market advantage, but for our own personal well-being and innovation ability to use this brain to create so it doesn't keep shrinking.

Martin: [00:17:34] 

So you were nodding a lot there.

Satish: [00:17:37] 

I can even relate this social pressure that builds up because of having access to this instant messaging. And also, I think we have got into a group thinking or a group behavior or a team behavior where because of the peer pressure or without having the knowledge of the consciousness that there are time zones that are [00:18:00] there in the world. Somehow, we always think if, as Ashley rightly mentioned, you if somebody in India who sends a message and it's too late night in the US, but the person on the other side will get tempted to respond. And even if you control yourself from not responding, the whole thought will be lingering on your mind and you, you lose the sleep in the night. So I think it's better to respond and then move on than not respond and wait until the morning to respond. So that's one other way to look at it.

Michelle: [00:18:34]

Yeah, it causes lingering anxiety, and when we have stress, we can't think we can't concentrate, how do we innovate if we're stressed in this, in this state of heightened anxiety all the time? It's going to come crashing to a halt. That's why you see so many people taking leaves or even saying, I'm going to take a sabbatical now because in COVID, the work and home life just completely blurred. So all of this multiplied, this problem multiplied, I think, in the pandemic.

Martin: [00:19:05] 

I'm going to push back a little bit, Michelle, on some of what you're saying, and maybe that can help qualify that statement because there are times when small interactions can be highly productive, especially when you have many different teams contributing to something working independently but working together. And you need just this piece of information and then your team can move forward. Formal organizations, you have to set up a meeting so your work gets extended because you've got to have this meeting. And then two days later, you have another meeting and then you're going to have another meeting in a week's time. And with a few instant messages, you can get basically the direction to go and you can move forward and then you can have your meeting in a week's time and validate that all of what you were doing was correct and you have the formal conversation. But in the middle, you've 

[00:20:00] 

had this ability to connect with other person in a couple of minute conversation. They've gone on. It may have distracted them for five and you only took two, but it moves everything forward. How do you how do you push back on that?

Michelle: [00:20:15] 

So I don't I don't push back on it at all because I agree with what you're saying. I think my point here is that our challenge is in this collaborative design of how we behave in these situations. So if you've articulated a situation where we want to be doing that kind of instant messaging because we're in that innovative space, and that's why teams have to get together and talk about this and say, in these instances, we're going to do this. In these other instances, we're going to do something else. So it has to be very customized to the value creation work that is happening in that moment. And a blanket, you know, statements such as, Oh, let's not do instant messaging, that would be ridiculous. That's the difficulty with all of these tools. We need them. We want them to do our work. I think they're great. It's how are we in relationship with them and when and how do we choose when to be instant messaging and when do we choose to be pausing? And it's very specific per team per project, per type of deep work or innovative work that we're doing. Customization right is

Martin: [00:21:27] 

Needed. Sounds right. Another dimension to this is that synchronous versus asynchronous conversation sometimes like you can have an asynchronous conversation and that's all you need. But sometimes you need a synchronous conversation. And just like because you have to interact really quickly and the words don't always work in when texting. How do you balance those things? Is that part of the sort of overall working agreement that you're talking about?

Michelle: [00:21:55] 

Absolutely. That's another one of these agreements that I encourage 

[00:22:00]

teams and facilitate teams to create is around how are we using synchronous and asynchronous and what makes sense if we're if we're one hundred percent virtual team. But in hybrid teams, the discussion happens. How much now should occur? How much do we need physical interaction? How many physical meetings make sense for this team and how many virtual meetings make sense? What what should be the balance, whatever that that workplace model is in terms of physical space and virtual space. It's going to be different for each team, and I don't think enough of these conversations are happening. There's too much focus on just designing the environment and using the tools versus really intentionally thinking about for this particular team what can optimize high performance and high well-being? Maybe we are 100 percent virtual. What else do you do to create human connection in the virtual world? How are you present with each other, even in a meeting, in a virtual meeting such that you can connect in a human way? And those those are the design elements of how to be that then makes sense for wellbeing.

Martin: [00:23:17]

Michelle, you've talked about your protagonist as this caring leader, you've talked about the theme of your agility narrative as the Iron Curtain. Who are the villains in this story, in this narrative and what are the constraints?

Michelle: [00:23:32]

This is a challenging question because villains can be heroes and heroes can be villains. So I'm going to start by defining the one of the villains. Collective group of villains would be Silicon Valley tech Silicon Valley tech that has a business model that. Profits from mining and stealing our attention and our data, but I'm not going to get into the database and 

[00:24:00]

this whole surveillance stuff that that all combined is a villain. At the same time, all of the tools that these villains have created are great. They're heroes. They have helped us do magnificent things, and I is going to help us do more and more magnificent things. And so so we have this villain in this hero at the same time, kind of in one thing. And that is the constraint. How do we how do we manage our relationship with the attention economy with our tools when we also want to continue develop these tools and we need these tools to succeed in solving the problems of mankind?

Martin: [00:24:41]

What would you call of action be to your caring leader?

Michelle: [00:24:45]

My call to action for the caring leader is to sense. Speak to your team as as the quick first step. Speak to your team and uncover what is the relationship that they have with each other and with tech in terms of their ability to innovate and be effective and have wellbeing at the same time. Just ask that question and see what comes out. And you will soon discover if there are issues in focus or culture or balance or tools or environment or in all of these areas, and be able to take baby steps and some quick wins in and designing work in a different way that that makes the team perform better without suffering.

Satish: [00:25:32]

Michelle, what is at stake here for the industry?

Michelle: [00:25:35]

So in my view, the industry is taking small action. You can see the level of action being taken if you follow the work of the Center for Humane Technology. The Center for Humane Technology you may know produced this film, The Social Dilemma, and they are the ones fighting Big Tech. They they have [00:26:00] the finger on the pulse of what is the industry doing, and they're very much lobbying, advocating for the industry, in particular Facebook these days to to do better in terms of protecting humanity. When you think about the threat for the executive or the opportunity for the executive, it's back to what is the level of risk of burnout and decreasing well-being, decreasing innovation, decreasing effectiveness in your team. That is the business case for paying attention to harnessing attention as an asset. And if all the executives begin to design work that harnesses and protects attention, it will also be baby steps to combating the larger villain of of the Silicon Valley business models that are stealing our attention

Martin: [00:26:53]

Should a caring leader decide not to take this battle for the attention seriously. What do you think is at stake for them?

Michelle: [00:27:03]

So I think what happens often in these days of all this talk about decreasing well-being and the very important focus on mental health. I think some executives are taking the first step of just delegating this to HR, which can help HR can develop work wellness programs and mental health initiatives to help individual employees. But I think the risk is that is a piecemeal, helpful but piecemeal approach to the greater opportunity that lies ahead in terms of designing work for sustained value creation with wellbeing. I think that's what's at stake. My hope for the future is that we will become the masters of our tools again and that we as humans will continue to be as creative, as innovative and as magnificent as we are able to be without compromising our own [00:28:00] well-being.

Martin: [00:28:02]

Thank you for sharing your strategies for battling attention. It's been great to talk to you.

Michelle: [00:28:08]

Thank you. Thank you, Martin. Thank you so much.

Satish: [00:28:11]

Thank you so much, Michel. Very interesting perspectives and amazing journey.

Michelle: [00:28:17]

It's a pleasure talking to you. It was fun.