Focus is particularly useful when work is formulaic and both outcomes and inputs are predictable. Let me ensure that I am not advocating for an unfocused organisation, but the focus must not be taken to mean that you overlook factors that help lift the reinvention for your organisation. Stephen Elop, the former Nokia CEO, reflected on Nokia’s disruption: “Our competitors aren’t taking market share with devices they are taking market share with an entire ecosystem.” With their eyes so firmly fixed on what they considered was their competitive advantage, they missed the opportunity of not only a touch screen phone, an app store and a tablet, but they missed the opportunity to diversify business models and create an ecosystem as Apple did. In line with the concept of being too focused, Nokia became blinkered that their way was the only way. Nokia for example, forgot its heritage as a reinvention maestro, with previous incarnations of the company ranging from a textile business to a consumer electronics. When an organization stumbles upon a killer product, such as Nokia did with the mobile phone, it starts to defend its competitive advantage and optimise for execution. It is important to note that an organisation can enter a stressed state even more so when they are enjoying periods of success. ![]() In the field of innovation and organisational development, seeing the big picture equates to “explore mode” and hyper-focus equates to “exploit mode”. Execution mode is absolutely essential for organisational success, however, we should enable our people to toggle between these two modes of “seeing the big picture” and “hyperfocus”. From an organisational perspective (excuse the pun) dilated mode is execution mode. I share this distinction to emphasise how organisations are predominantly in “stressed-eye mode” and run by “dilated peoples”. You can see in the image below when a stressed (dilated) eye looks into a forest, it only sees the tree in the forest, everything else blurs into the background. Huberman shares the visual example of a person looking into a forest when the pupil is dilated. In such cases, the eye “narrows in” on the potential opportunity or threat and we become blinkered. When we see something that distresses us or even something that appeals to us, our eyes focus on the subject. Our most immediate reaction to stress is for our pupils to dilate, which changes how we see the world - literally - in a way that allows us to better respond to threats. The vast majority of the information we collect about the world comes through the eyes, and those circuits are tied directly to our “fight or flight” systems. ( Huberman’s podcast is second to none and Andrew regularly recommends The Innovation Show to his audience). ![]() Stanford neurobiologist and ophthalmologist, Andrew Huberman studies how the nervous system takes in and processes information and uses this information to drive reflexive and deliberate behaviour. “to not see the forest for the trees” idiom: to not understand or appreciate a larger situation, problem, etc., because one is considering only a few parts of it
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