She's running the meeting, but she's not here. I can see it in her eyes. Half her attention is on the conversation, half is on the email she just received, the one she hasn't opened yet but knows is there. The meeting drifts. Decisions get deferred. Everyone leaves wondering why we met.
I know that state because I've lived in it. The constant split. The attention scattered across a dozen concerns, none of them receiving full presence. It feels productive because it feels busy. But the results tell a different story. What I've learned, slowly, is that the quality of external outcomes is directly tied to the quality of internal attention. When I'm fragmented inside, my work is fragmented outside. When I can gather my attention fully onto one thing, that thing tends to get done well.
This is obvious and also constantly ignored. We build systems for managing tasks, time, and teams. We rarely build systems for managing attention. Yet attention is upstream of all of it. Before the strategy, before the execution, before the results, there's the question of whether the person making decisions is actually present for them.