Good Observation Skills: the Basics of Military Strategies and Improvements in a Small Business I Part 2

There are a series of factors that decrease the ability to observe relevant facts from a business that can improve it with little or no costs of time, effort and money.

Missing the obvious from the big picture comes easy and goes unseen. You can read the first part of the article here.

Simplification of Reality

Simplification is the process that the mind uses to stay on the TOP of problems, on top of the whirlwind where the body moves with multitasking and improvises solutions, on TOP of the SPACE where you perceive the activity as variable and new.

The mind cannot handle the speed at which your body moves to do the multitude of tasks and activities. You don’t have time to think what is relevant and what is not. The mind needs order, it needs to understand the logic of what you do, of the randomness in your work. While you are in the middle of the work, the mind cannot process all the small stuff involved. So, it adapts to your crazy pace and what it does, instead of processing, of finding the logic and order of the things you do with multitasking, it SIMPLIFIES them. It puts all those RANDOM tasks that just pop up into a big bag and gives it a vague name.

Simplification means reducing the complexity of the IMMEDIATE, surrounding environment, the dynamics at 360 degrees in order to handle it by taking immediate action. Simplification happens when one doesn’t have the CLARITY of all the factors involved, one doesn’t see the details. As a result, one uses relative terms such as: hard work, serve clients, run in all direction, handle the workload, we are a small business etc.

With a simplified perception of reality, there is no reason to SWEAT the SMALL stuff (figuring out their order), meaning observing small facts, happenings and understand their relevance in a bigger context.

Simplification is a necessity as it gives you the minimum of understanding for TAKING ACTION in all its forms: in order to start a business, initiate different projects, take risks, deal with unknown and new situations, handle urgent problems when things get messy, asking someone out, doing networking etc. Simplification also removes the details from the picture which means one decreases her ability to OBSERVE the surrounding environment that can help you make improvements with little or no effort and costs.

Multitasking with Diverted Attention

The variable part of the work, what seems to be new, unpredictable and individual task, problems are dealt with multitasking. So, multitasking has to do with the work itself, with how the PHYSICAL BODY moves in order to handle all small details that are common sense and that the mind cannot perceive because of a simplified version of reality. It is about what you DO specifically, the MOVEMENTS at the ground level UNDER the TOP (the mind simplifying reality).

The variability of the work is handled randomly by employing multitasking. There is no PARTICULAR order of handling the same tasks and it varies according to the dynamic of the day. We cannot make a CONNECTION among tasks.

So, the randomness of the workload DICTATES you HOW to work. This means that you have NO control. However, it seems that you DO have control because you can HANDLE multiple, individual and or random tasks on the spot, improvise solutions and save the day. It seems you have control because you are literally getting in TOUCH with what you do and MODIFY, ALTER the state of the tasks at hand. To this you can add the multiple characteristic of an activity and in the end, you are left with a sense of accomplishment and feeling significant: “look how much I did today, how hard I worked”.

When the workload increases significantly (the traffic in the restaurant), there is still no particular way of doing things, but the focus is on ADJUSTING which increases from 10 to 20-50 times/day as we take in all the relevant and irrelevant things, there is no COMMON judgement to distinguish between what is relevant and what is not, what is priority and what is not. This increases, of course, the rate of mistakes in both the cooking and the serving process.

Adjusting in every possible dynamic scenario with no sense of priority or criteria for making decisions, it leads to DIVERTED ATTENTION. Diverted attention is how the MIND focuses in the present moment while the PHYSICAL body applies multitasking.

Diverted attention is when your IMMEDIATE attention is busy SEEING the images of all the small and multiple tasks you need to handle. In addition, your physical body follows what the mind sees which is all the small tasks that need to be handled in your immediate time and space. As a result, your body increases SPEED in order to keep up with the huge workload which is just a CROWD of images that are running in your mind like hell and that you are desperately trying to keep up with.

So, basically your attention is all over the place and you are unable to observe individual elements or patterns that could have a BETTER use than their current one by organizing and making improvements towards a more efficient business.

The inability to verbalize

Here is the thing: SEEING the images of all the things that need to be handled does NOT imply THINKING them. Thinking means the ability to ATTACH WORDS to the IMAGES you SEE in your mind which are actually the things you need to handle around you with multitasking.

In addition, thinking also requires the ability to create a RED LINE among ALL the WORDS that are attached to those images, meaning you are able to be coherent and accurate in explaining the logic of the things that you SEE and can DO.
To put it shortly, it means the ability to verbalize what you do.

The fact that you put in words what you see, it gives you clarity. In the beginning I could just say that I was busy and running in all directions to serve clients (simplifying reality). But, the moment I could identify the 3 overlapping activities and verbalize them (serve clients in the restaurant, to go and take orders for deliveries), I got clarity about a small dynamic in the restaurant.

So, one is able to PHYSICALLY handle multiple tasks at the same time because she has NO THOUGHTS about them. So, diverted attention, multitasking is about SEEING and ACTING fast with NO thoughts in between based on the FLEXIBILITY of the mind to jump from one to another, to defocus and refocus. This means a long term habit of DOING without attaching WORDS to what you do and see.

Both simplification and diverted attention reinforce the inability to verbalize what you see and do. As a result, they lead to lack of awareness of the details and patterns involved in a business. Hence, you cannot observe and you end up dismissing information and facts that might be useful.

Has it ever happen to you that you said something out loud and then, suddenly you became aware of what you said?

Well, the observation process is also influenced and triggered by the initiative to try EXPLAINING (verbalizing) what you see or what you think even if you don’t understand it or there is no meaning, no relevance.

This is done with a daily journal and revisions of the business activity. This is what I did. When I first got hired in the restaurant, I started to keep a daily journal, review my daily activity and I was writing down the events of the day and also random observations that seemed to have no relevance for BIG results (e.g. an increase in sales).

The fact that I was trying to explain in writing the IMAGES I was recalling, in time, it helped me identify patterns and come up with solutions for improvements in the restaurant, such as improving the service process (you can read about this here) and increased sales.

The individuality of problems

Multitasking means that tasks are performed in a random manner. This means every problem and task is perceived as an INDIVIDUAL factor. There is no CONNECTION among our tasks as there is no order in performing them. So, when a problem pops up, it is a problem per se and it has nothing to do with the rest of activity. As a result, every INDIVIDUAL problem has a UNIQUE solution.

Now, given the whole workload with many, small tasks and overlapping activities (multiple things happening at the same time), this means we have to constantly ADJUST to every single scenario that pops up as a result of different combinations among our RANDOMLY performed tasks in a NEW, different day. This is called IMPROVISING.

Improvising is a mindset. This means mind is looking for a DIRECT link between an INDIVIDUAL observation and a problem, such as increasing sales. If a random or small observation cannot be used for an improvised solution (meaning an IMMEDIATE result), then it is rejected as being irrelevant. As a result, one decreases its ability of observation and orientation in the business.

Simplifying reality, diverted attention, inability to verbalize and the individuality of problems are factors that decrease focus and hence, the ability to observe relevant facts and resources that can have positive impact on the overall business performance with little or no effort and costs.

In the third part we will look at a military mindset for observing an environment that I also applied in the small restaurant I worked and that helped me to make improvements and increase sales.

Mihaela Dragan