The Change Dude’s Blog

How’s Your Situation Awareness?

Zipping along at 600 miles per hour 100 feet off the ground in a high performing aircraft demands some serious focus.  However, fixating too long on what’s coming directly at you will cause a loss of  what’s going on around you.  Learning to maintain an awareness of the entire situation while focusing on a specific task is crucial to survival.  This skill is known as “situation awareness”

Living in an era characterized by incessant change we are constantly confronted with our changing roles as individuals, the reinvention of our companies and institutions faster than ever imagined.  I read a piece last week that discussed how the length of a generation is changing from what was once nearly 20 years for the Baby Boom generation to between 6 and 7 years for what is being described as the iGeneration.  We all need to keep our heads on a swivel to keep up our situation awareness.

Leaders must maintain the highest levels of situation awareness offering agile responses to the changes around them.  When working with clients I routinely probe how they maintain their personal situation awareness as well as that of their organization.  Most frequently the answer is “I just try to keep up with what’s in front of me and keep my team focused”.  Can’t really argue with that response, but it does leave room for serious loss of situation awareness.

You may have lost your situation awareness if:

1. Justifying your organization’s value to others is a full time job
2. Listing your most important customers and why they value your company requires asking someone else
3. Competitors in your sector know more about you than you do about them
4. Engaging with customers regularly isn’t at the top of your “to-do’ list

Maintaining your situation awareness and that of everyone in the organization allows everyone to participate in making decisions about how and why change is important.

February 18, 2010 - Posted by thechangedude | Uncategorized