Coordination of Attention

“All at my command!”: Without the possibility to coordinate the attention of organisation members about communication, no organisation would even come into being. The means of accomplishing this are endless: job descriptions, organisational charts, instructions, command chains, meetings, hands on gatherings, company newsletters, chatrooms, values, goals, visions etc.. These means all share something in that they, amongst other things, limit, align and attune the attention of employees to each other. At the moment an organisation can no longer find a possibility of maintaining this coordination, it collapses. It immediately follows, that this performance within an organisation is closely linked with the (technical) possibility of achieving the attention of their employees. The town crier’s ringing in the market place from earlier days and the social media apps from today enable different time scales, different volumes, different complexity. In the context of change and management of organisations, the greatest significance must be attributed to the manner and method of directing and stabilising attention to themes, or to withdrawing this again. Organisations change by altered attention foci. Often change and leadership activities focus more on actions (“Do it this way!”) This is often problematic, because actions are the consequences of attention foci and, therefore, appeals for action often fail.