...And ultimately, any organizational initiative that's successful comes down to individuals changing their behavior. But if they're not paying any attention to what the initiative is about, its objectives and so on, they're not going to change their behavior. Getting real change to happen in organizations becomes a matter of individual attention...
TYPES PRINCIPLE: Six basic units of currency are exchanged in an attention market, each emphasizing a specific facet of focused mental engagement.
Six types of attention can be paired into three dimensions. Each pair contains two opposing kinds of attention: (1) captive or voluntary, (2) aversion-based or attraction-based, and (3) front-of-mind or back-of-mind.
Captive vs. voluntary
People pay attention not only to things they have to pay attention to, but also to what they want to pay attention to. When someone straps you down and props your eyelids open with toothpicks, you tend to pay lots of attention. Movie preview advertisers understand this and pay dearly to sell products (particularly upcoming movies) in the dark of a movie theater.
But we give an equally strong form of attention to those things on which we freely choose to focus. Some products are best advertised in magazines or newspapers because they take advantage of "voluntary" attention. It is actually easier for readers to turn the page than to stop and look at the advertising, but when they do stop, tremendous amounts of information can be communicated to the voluntarily attentive mind.
Attraction vs. aversion
We tend to pay the most attention to things at either end of the attraction/aversion continuum. Think about yourself people-watching in an airport or some other public place. Which people are the ones that actually get your attention? One category is those that you find most beautiful or attractive - or at least the ones that are "your type."
The other category is the exact opposite - the freaks, the truly ugly, the deformed. We hate to admit it, but either one of these categories is likely to make us stop and stare. Partly because it is so politically incorrect to stop and stare, the urge to sneak a peek can become almost obsessive.
Front-of-mind vs. back-of-mind
The difference between front-of-mind attention and the back-of-mind version is very simple. Think about yourself driving down the street talking to a friend. Your front of mind attention is the topic of conversation. At the end of the drive you'll be able to think back on it and remember most parts of the dialogue.
You probably won't remember much of your back-of-mind attention -- but it was equally important. You probably did not run a single traffic light down the whole road. You paid complete and devoted attention to driving your vehicle, and to all the state and local traffic laws, and you don't even remember it.
