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Attention-Protecting
Techniques and Technologies: By
Pauline Harris Presented
at the
What is attention? And why does it need protecting? Towards the beginning of The Attention Economy by Tom Davenport and John Beck, attention is defined as "focused mental engagement on a particular item of information. Items come into our awareness, we attend to a particular item, and then we decide whether to act."1 There is a narrowing phase that involves filtering out sensory inputs, and then the decision phase where we act on the attention-getting info. Attention cannot happen without these two phases. Common sense tells us, 'of course what you pay attention to gets done!' But, how do you decide what merits attention when you have dozens of projects being lobbed into your office or cube, sometimes without warning, at any given time? Who decides what should get attention, and what are the criteria for making those decisions? What gets put aside, what gets top billing, how do we avoid making crappy decisions because of faulty or downright wrong information? To put it in raw terms, we end up paying a lot more (loss of revenue and productivity) when we do not pay attention to what we pay attention to. You need to pay attention to protecting your attention because it directly affects the effectiveness of your company. Here is one story of a product that could, to some extent, protect your attention. A recent study claims that 68% of knowledge workers "prefer to find external information themselves rather than turning to other staff members, the company library, or outside research firms." 2 This is for information that knowledge workers rely most upon for their jobs. In addition, 79% of these knowledge workers surveyed prefer to seek out free information on the Internet.3 To that I say, you get what you pay for. The white paper put together by Outsell, Inc. presents survey results of over 6,300 knowledge workers, spanning across 20 industries and covering end users in 10 functional groups (marketing, HR, engineering, etc.) and focuses on "the daily information habits, needs, and preferences of corporate end users." Moreover.com, if you haven't heard of it, "provides companies with real-time news, information, and even rumors from every online source that impacts their business . . . savings hours in research." Some large companies, including PricewaterhouseCoopers (whose intranet was highlighted in AOK's Conference Center in June 2001) use Moreover as a news-feed for their company-wide portals. Now, I think that the product, from what I've seen, is pretty good. It does what it says it does, allows you to have the latest news on your particular area of interest right there on your desktop, and is seamless to the end user. However, I question the claims of the white paper. I do this because, as an Information Professional, I cannot sit back and watch another group of technologists dismiss the role of libraries, librarians, and research centers as a matter of fulfilling a cost-saving business need. Libraries are attention-protectors. The management team of Moreover consists of high-powered salespeople and technologists. While this impressive group of people have much experience in working with leading news organizations (Dow Jones, Economist, Financial Times), gathering time-critical news content, and selling it, I am not clear on how the information is filtered. My guess is that the software looks for key content providers, and the latest news off the wires, and goes from there based on a client's specifically identified business topics. Doesn't Yahoo! do this for free? Yes, but remember, you get what you pay for. Moreover costs money, and this lets you buy into content that otherwise is not accessible. The paper goes right for the jugular, pointing out how many hours and how much money is lost to searching for information: "Cutting down on that expense is a huge ROI opportunity for employers."4 And what employer does not want to cut down expenses? Seems to me, if that research were centralized more, say, with professional researchers acting as internal consultants for their companies, then that "huge ROI opportunity" would be even bigger. If you have professional researchers concentrating on doing what they do best -- research -- and have the other knowledge workers doing what they do best -- selling, dealing with benefits, analyzing budgets -- the organization benefits by being more efficient, and much more effective. Another point of contention that the white paper brings out is the problem of reliable information on the Internet. Just because 79% of respondents prefer the open Internet as a source of information does not mean that their information is good. Again, these are the same people who claim to spend 8 hours a week "obtaining, reviewing and analyzing external information." How much more time is spent verifying information? Verification is a given when you allow research specialists to do their jobs. But wait, you say, the Moreover product does the verification for you, too! Yes, that is true. Keep in mind, however, that the Moreover product is for the latest -- "dynamic" is how they describe it - news and information. There is no archive. If you want some research done on an issue from last year, last week, or yesterday, you will have to go elsewhere. And you will have to pay for it. Personally, I think that Moreover has a great product for what it does. If you've got an exec who wants her news when she turns on her computer, this is probably an option to consider. I also think that Outsell's white paper is worth a read. There are good ideas that can be applied to the criteria necessary for content management of an Intranet. I've pointed out the stats I think are misleading. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide what hype is right for you. Blame it on the Internet. More than half of us here in the United States are using the Internet today (see Appendix 1). In reality, though, it all began around 1455 in Mainz, Germany with a bunch of printers led by a guy named Gutenberg. We have witnessed throughout the past 500+ years the effect of the printed word on the world. If we go back even further, say, another 1500+ years, we can see that the change from an oral and auditory-based society to a visually-oriented society resulted in what we have today: a bunch of people who can barely remember their names let alone what the next appointment scheduled is. The point is, the human capacity for memory is not what it used to be, especially since we are not trained from birth to not only listen to stories, but to be able to perform and recite them verbatim as did folks in the time of Homer. Our attention is so splintered and fragmented, we need many devices to help us remember what to do each day. The wall calendar has space enough for you to write in your appointments or any other occasions you need to remember. Your PDA goes a step further and 'beeps' at you when it is time to go to a meeting, take a pill, make a phone call. Taking the time to set these alarms is an attention-saving technique as it saves you the trouble of having to keep the appointments, pill-taking and phone-call-making at the forefront of your brain. As Davenport and Beck point out, delegating an item to the 'back-of-the-brain' does not eliminate it from your radar screen, but stores it in the background until attention needs to be paid to it. There are people called personal assistants, administrative assistants and secretaries who, in effect, act as your 'back of the brain' thus freeing up your intellectual capacity for what needs critical attention. In the OutSell study, people were asked about their research habits and how long it took them to find information on the Internet. Librarians and other Information Professionals will take issue with some of the findings that suggest that Information Professionals are no longer needed by knowledge workers. On the contrary, with the state of the constant influx of unreliable information, especially via the Internet, Information Professionals are needed more than ever to do what they have always done, weed out the garbage. Faux-Work Another concept that clearly impinges on our attention at the workplace is what is known as 'faux-work'. I never knew what to call this, and now, I'm glad I have the language for it. 'Faux-work' happens when work "politics consumes too much daily energy."5 If workers are focused on the political shenanigans at the office, then work does not get much space as a front-of-brain activity. Personal phone calls and e-mail which can make you "look" busy are actually faux-work. This directly correlates with the business model shift from getting paid for creating items to getting paid by the hour. Employees need leadership to manage their attention so that faux-work does not take up so much of their time. Think of it this way: is it "constructive action that contributes to the firm's bottom line" when employees are seething about internal politics day in and day out? Their attention is not focused, so time, energy, and of course, attention is wasted. First off, ask yourself, "What do I pay attention to?" Then, accept that there is a need to protect your attention. The realization that your attention is a valuable commodity does wonders for your sense of self worth, as well as helping you to see that your organization really needs you to focus on some issues more than others. What are you doing to ensure that the company makes the best use of your time? How do you influence your knowledge workers to do their best? The better your knowledge workers' time is spent, the easier and freer of infoglut your job becomes. Decide what the most important issue facing your department or company is and focus on it. Use the filtering techniques and technologies reported on here to help you. You do not have to read everything that comes across your desk or email. There are services and people who can filter information for you. You just have to find out which techniques and technologies work best for your situation. E-mail Filters There are ways to weed the 200+ e-mails you get each day. Unless it is your job to respond to customer e-mails, you have to trust that you do not have to read and respond to every e-mail that comes to you. Talk to your e-mail administrator to find out what filtering capabilities you have, if you are not sure. E-mail filters can allow you to:
Perhaps the most important issue surrounding e-mail is whether or not your company has a clear policy about worker use of e-mail. Policy issues are tackled in a recent CIO article sidebar on email management: Ten Tips for Taming the Beast
CIO also provides sample e-mail usage policies at http://www.cio.com/printlinks. Instant Messaging Instant Messaging (IM) is the answer to e-mail overload. IM, as its name suggests, allows you to 'talk' in real time with your colleague. What advantage does this have over email and telephone? E-mail is not instant. You cannot guarantee you will get a response when you need it. Labeling the e-mail "Urgent" does not mean you will get a prompt answer. And, as we all know, people do not always answer their telephones, and oftentimes, you cannot even leave a message as their voicemail boxes are full. IM is, however, a great tool to use in concert with the telephone. For example, a web developer can IM links or files while explaining to her producer exactly what needs fixing. Copying and pasting into the IM window saves time and confusion, no miskeyed URL or file paths.
IM allows you to not only ask your question and get a better chance at obtaining an immediate answer, but there are voice and video capabilities that let the program act as a sort of video phone. The Yahoo! IM, for example, has an audio capability that is more than adequate for the typical computer user. You can send links, files and, depending on the nature of the correspondence, you can either close out of the conversation and nothing is recorded, or you can save or set the program on automatic archive and a folder, with the IM name of the person you've had the conversation with, is created and the conversation is recorded there in your computer. It's your choice whether or not you record the conversation. You can also invite more than one person to a 'chat room' or, what some of the fee-based IM systems call it, a "meeting space" or a "collaboration space." This way, if you need the input of another person, or want more people to be in on the discussion, you can send an electronic invitation that will ask them to attend and put them in the right "room" when they accept. The biggest drawback with this is that the thread of the discussion can get confusing and lost with too many people participating in the conversation, especially when more than one question has been posed. In my opinion, IM today works best at a one-on-one level. An exception to this general rule happened on September 11, 2001. I conducted a brief interview with a project manager for a major publishing company. Here's what she said, in her own words, about the impact of IM on her office:
If you were in or around Manhattan just after the attacks, you know that the phones did not work. The Internet was the only game in town on September 11, 2001. Phone lines were simply inoperable for voice communications. The only way to communicate outside Manhattan was to send e-mails and use IM, unless you were lucky enough to have a Blackberry or a Nextel phone, two devices that overcame the difficulties that day and for days to come. If nothing else, these attacks have exemplified the importance of having multiple modes of communication avenues during a crisis situation. It is a good idea to find out your own company's disaster preparedness in terms of communication coming in, and information being disseminated out. IM is a quick, simple way to contact people and share information. Here are two examples of IM systems, one almost fee-based and one free. Groove.net Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes, founded Groove Networks in October 1997. Groove v.1.3 is the latest preview edition, which is why it is still free to use, try out, and possibly get addicted to. Messaging in Groove is rooted in shared spaces that collect people, tools, and documents around common projects. Groove has a lot of the bells and whistles in response to the 'wish lists' of capabilities through the computer - virtual collaborative workspaces - that managers seem to want. You have calendar capabilities, an address book for e-mail, and "skins" you can apply to change the appearance of your Groove session. There is a standard set of seven tools that are part of a Project workspace: Discussion, Brainstorming, Documents, Task List, Scheduler, Links and Contact List. You can add additional tools to the Project space, like a Sketchpad or Notepad (for collaborating on documents) as you wish. Groove really is architected for collaborative efforts.
Skins are becoming more and more popular -- Yahoo! Messenger calls it IMVironment. This is a nod towards the growing trend towards customization by the user. Right now there are only three skins from which to choose. Yahoo! Messenger (YM)
Here's what a plain vanilla window looks like:
See expanded list of IM programs in Appendix 1. A word on Firewalls: Firewalls are set up by your IT department as a security measure to protect your company's computers from hackers. We've heard of stories of IM systems getting hacked into, mostly AOL's IM (AIM) system. Generally, however, IM traffic does not pose a great threat to your company's computer systems. You can set up an IM system completely within the firewall of your company. The major problem with that is you will not be able to communicate with people out in the field or those colleagues who are not part of your company. Another consideration is to find out if your knowledge workers are already using IM, which system, and how they use it. The company I mentioned in the Disaster Recovery Story was able to do what it did because it saw the importance of allowing its employees to work through a system that most of them already knew how to use. No training, many workers already familiar with the system, and an almost no-cost solution (they use AIM, which is a free download from AOL.com or netscape.com). Pagers/Text Messaging If you have a mobile phone, you may already have these capabilities. Check with your service provider about what's included in your contract. You may find, if you have a mobile phone through the company, that you automatically have the ability to send and receive pages, as well as SMS (short message system, a sort of abbreviated e-mail you do with your mobile phone.) Blackberrys and PDAs are the standard devices, with mobile phone quickly coming into their own. So, you think you are out of the woods now that you've turned on all your e-mail filters and logged on to IM? Think again. The techniques listed below are ways for you to enhance that attention you've taken the time to protect without having to touch a computer.
A caveat about Voicemail: Company telephone systems just have too many functions to them. They are hard to use, confusing to learn, and you need to have the how-to manual at hand to change the message on your voicemail for when you are away. While voicemail does lend the appearance of personal contact, it is also the best way to avoid people. When a voicemail box is filled, your chances of contacting that person via phone is next to nil. You must have other avenues of communication, including e-mail, IM and paging. Donald Norman's Design of Everyday Things reminds us that oftentimes, those for whom products are being designed are almost never consulted about what they want and how they use things. As Bill Jensen's book Simplicity tries to convey (repeatedly, and for a good purpose), progress is stymied when user-centeredness is tossed aside. Communication breaks down, faux work takes over, and productivity disappears. One way to overcome the communication break-down -- as well as defeating some of the infoglut - is to find out what your knowledge workers need to know on a daily basis. Alison Head, a usability expert and Information Professional, wanted to find out what are the frequently asked research questions (FARQs) knowledge workers face each day. In her soon to be published study on the effectiveness of corporate intranets, Head was able to pinpoint at least 20 FARQs that occurred across the board for most of the companies who participated in her study. Here are the top five FARQs that describe what knowledge workers want to know:
This is basic information, but for some reason, it is hard to find. Especially, it seems, once a company turns to intranet technology as a "knowledge management" solution. Another major finding in this study is this: workers simply find the intranet too hard to use, so they turn to other, proven methods to find what they need: the Internet (Google searching or the Yahoo portal), the telephone, some printed sourcebook, anything but the Intranet. Mostly, the failure of the intranets falls under design. Of the seven companies who participated, only one of the corporate intranets had a search capability. Company intranets are greatly underutilized precisely because they are not user friendly and are seen as "a waste of time." If this describes your company's intranet, don't wait for the next redesign of the intranet, rather, try using one of the low-tech techniques above to get your knowledge workers the information they need. Post contact information in a central location, pass out copies of the latest press coverage of the company, make sure they know where the company policies can be accessed. This will allow you to spend your time and attention on more pressing issues. Davenport and Beck state: "Managers who care about managing their organization's scarcest resource must employ assessment, attention-getting techniques, controls to limit the volume of information, protection against useless information, and education."8 This is a great way to use Information Professionals. Another thing to keep in mind is the focus on the end-user, the customer, your knowledge worker, anyone using technology as a means to communicate or do work. In a June 2000 Forrester Report focused on non-PC devices, the study concluded that:
Bill Jensen, in his latest book Work 2.0, creates a new work contract in which employees demand that their time and attention not be wasted.10 He challenges leaders to pay attention to their employees, asks, "[H]ave you ever considered an employee's time, attention, ideas, knowledge, passion, energy, and social networks to be an investment in you? In your firm? And have you considered the consequences: What's expected in return?"11 Remember, the better your knowledge workers' time is spent, the easier and freer of infoglut your job becomes. The story does not end here. It will take a steady effort to constantly monitor and upkeep the system(s) you choose to protect your attention. Using filters and recognizing the talent around you will not guarantee that you will not slide right back into the morass that is your daily schedule. Unless you are serious about creating good habits -- using the techniques and technologies highlighted here and elsewhere -- that will protect your attention, you will wallow in the murky sea of infoglut. Be vigilant! Be strong! Above all, be careful with how you treat your attention -- it's the most valuable asset you have. Books Breier, Mark with Armin Brott. The 10-Second Internet Manager. Crown Business Books, c. 2000. Davenport Thomas H., and John C. Beck. The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business. Harvard Business School Press: 2001 Accenture. Homer, The Iliad. Probably about 750 B.C.E. Homer, The Odyssey. Probably about 750 B.C.E. Jensen, Bill. Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage in a World of More, Better, Faster. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2001. http://www.simplerwork.com Jensen, Bill. Work 2.0: Rewriting the Contract. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2002. Lipnack, Jessica, and Jeffrey Stamps. Virtual Teams: People Working Across Boundaries with Technology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000. Second edition. MacLuan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. New York: Bantum Books, Inc., 1967. Norman, Donald. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Currency, 1989. Articles AOL Retreats From Big Push for E-Books, by David D. Kirkpatrick, December 5, 2001. alta-l@ala1.ala.org Can IM Graduate to Business? by Jon Udell 12/20/2001 http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/12/20/udell.html How to Tame the E-Mail Beast, by Lauren Gibbons Paul, CIO, October 15,2001: 84-92. I Want My Active Buddy, by Ryan Naraine, atnewyork.com: April 26, 2001. http://www.atnewyork.com/views/article/0,1471,8481_753131,00.html IM poised to become instant information tool, by John Borland and Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com: April 25, 2001, 12:45pm PST http://news.com.com/2100-1023-256475.html IM: The real killer app? by Jack Of Hearts, December 5, 2001 http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?id=1825 Instant Messages That Talk by Ryan Naraine, atnewyork.com: June 21, 2001. http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article/0,1471,8471_789021,00.html Instant Messaging For Corporate Collaboration, by Lowell Rapaport, November 2001 http://www.imagingmagazine.com/db_area/archs/2001/11/tfm0111f3.shtml?collaboration The Medium Is the Instant Message, by Marc Weingarten, Business 2.0: February 2002 Issue White Papers, Studies and Presentations Guide to Internet Usage and Policy. Elron Software, 2000. http://www.internetmanager.com "Many Devices, One Consumer," Forrester Research, Inc., June 2000. "On-the-Job Research: How Usable are Corporate Research Intranets?" by Alison J. Head with Shannon Staley. Presentation given February 8, 2002 to BAYNET members, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. Publication available March 2002 through Special Libraries Association. Contact: books@sla.org Internet Use by US population, as of September 2001:
From CNN.com Report: More than 50 percent of U.S. on Internet, 2/6/02. http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/02/06/internet.use/index.html A List of Providers of Instant Messaging and Collaborative Software (compiled by Lowell Rapaport added to by *Pauline Harris) *ActiveBuddy, Inc. (www.activebuddy.com) ActiveBuddy provides software for developing and hosting interactive agents. ActiveBuddyTM software and hosting solutions enable marketers, content and service providers, and businesses to deploy interactive agents that deliver a wide range of personalized content and services across all platforms that support interactive text messaging. ActiveBuddy claims to "provide[s] companies with a new environment to more efficiently interact with their customers and distribute information." America Online (www.aol.com). AOL Instant Messenger is the largest instant messaging network with more than 100 million users, according to AOL. Being the largest, AOL Instant Messenger is the network with which most corporate software vendors seek compatibility. AOL licenses access to its instant messaging network to other third party vendors of instant messaging software. Bantu (www.bantu.com). Bantu's Java and WAP clients bring instant messaging to a wide variety of platforms and computing networks. Access to public instant messaging networks is made through Bantu's own server that acts as a proxy between Bantu Messenger clients and public instant messaging networks. Bantu's client is specifically designed to be integrated with user interface applications like Web portals and content management clients. eRoom (www.eroom.com). eRoom's Digital Workplace combines access to structured data (through integration with enterprise applications) and unstructured information generated via nonreal-time collaboration tools (such as email and bulletin boards) with real-time collaboration (instant messaging, shared applications and white board). Facetime (www.facetime.com). Facetime develops instant messaging proxy servers that provide additional services on top of existing instant messaging networks. The services include message routing, broadcasting and conferencing. Facetime Instant Message Director lets instant messages be switched just like a PBX. This switching ability lets a firm have a generic instant message address. Inquiries to that address can then be directed to specific users or departments such as customer service. The reverse is also possible, one instant messaging user can broadcast to multiple instant messaging accounts at the same time. Facetime Instant Message Director can be used with the clients supplied by the public instant messaging networks or it can use its own Java client. Flypaper (www.flypaper.com). Flypaper's TeamSpace is a collaboration-oriented Web content management system. It combines collaborative features such as conferencing and instant messaging with content management features such as a document repository. *Groove (www.groove.net) Ray Ozzie founded Groove Networks in October 1997. Ray is best known as the creator of Lotus Notes. Messaging in Groove is rooted in shared spaces that collect people, tools, and documents around common projects. Some finance workers claim that Groove is an almost ideal environment for trans-corporate dealmaking. Groove provides electronic white board, application sharing, and an entire suite of collaborative tools -- check out the Project space. ICQ (www.ICQ.com). Acquired in June 1998 by America Online, ICQ was the first public instant messaging network. The system's protocol has been published. This has led to a large assortment of alternative clients for all platforms, including Java and Linux. *Jabber (www.jabber.com) Jabber and Groove offer more capabilities for file transfers, conversation tracking, and record-keeping than do free clients like AOL's instant messaging. Jabber is an instant messaging and presence management platform based on XML and open standards. Lotus (www.lotus.com). Lotus' Sametime is the chief competitor to Microsoft Netmeeting. Sametime works with Lotus Notes servers to provide instant messaging along with video conferencing, voice communication, white board and application sharing. Sametime clients can also interoperate with AOL's Instant Messenger network. Microsoft (www.microsoft.com). Microsoft's Messenger Service is the chief rival to AOL Instant Messenger and Microsoft's Conference Server is a competitor to Lotus' Sametime. Businesses using Microsoft Exchange can set up an independent internal instant messaging network using the Conference Server and one of two clients used by Microsoft's Messenger Service. One Messenger Service client supports instant messaging and IP telephony while Microsoft Netmeeting combines instant messaging with a group of features including an electronic white board, application sharing and video conferencing. *Odigo (www.odigo.com) Odigo, Inc. is a leading provider of Instant Messaging and Presence Solutions to wireless carriers, Telcos, ISPs, and portals worldwide. Odigo's products include IM Servers, SMS-IM Gateways, and Presence Management Solutions. Odigo software allows multiple IM systems to interoperate. Yahoo (www.yahoo.com). Yahoo's instant messenger service is tied in with the company's portal business. Voice and video (webcam) capabilities are available, as is file sharing.
Post this next to your computer monitor: Top 10 E-mail
Tips from The
10-Second Internet Manager* 1 The Attention Economy, page 20. 2 "Managing Online Information to Maximize Corporate Intranet ROI," page 4. 5 The Attention Economy, p. 144-6 6 "How to tame the e-mail beast" by Lauren Gibbons Paul, CIO, Oct. 15, 2001, p.86. 7 "On-the-Job Research: How Usable are Corporate Research Intranets?" by Alison Head with Shannon Staley. Study available March 2002 from Special Libraries Association Publications. 8 The Attention Economy, p. 203 9 The Forrester Report, "Many Devices, One Consumer", June 2000 (quick view page). 10 Bill Jensen, Work 2.0. See Article 17 on page 19. |
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Introduction
With some IM programs, you can set the program
to let you know when the party you wish to contact is available.
This is not unlike the e-mail filters discussed above. Of course,
this depends on the other party being online, but again, the
program can be set to tell you that your colleague is now 'available'
-- the program 'decides' this because it can detect that your
colleague is using his computer, so you know he is actually at
his desk. That is one more piece of information that can save
you an unanswered e-mail or an unanswered phone call. AOL's Buddy
List, for example, shows you a list of those colleagues with
whom you IM, and when you mouse-over their IM names, you will
see just how long they have been online. It makes no sense to
call someone who's been online for 22 hours -- he probably just
left his computer on since the day before. Send an IM instead
and see if an automatic message shows up, or if the person answers.
YM allows users to not only text chat with
their buddies, but has audio and video capabilities that allow
you to see and hear your buddy using the computer's audio system
and your own web cam. Also, using net2phone's technology, you
can use your computer as a telephone and make phone calls while
online. You can keep track of your stock portfolio, keep an online
calendar to remind you of appointments or events, check on the
top stories from Reuters News Services, check on the weather
of cities you have selected, and get an overview of all your
services in one screen. YM lets you transmit links, send files
(like an attachment in email, except this gets to your intended
recipient faster) and gives you the opportunity to select what
is called an IMVironment. Above is an example.
