CNN, in its article "Pricey Election Bails Out Postal Service," reported, "While still low on cash, the postal service has enough to avoid insolvency this month, thanks in large part to the mountains of political junk mail and the influx of Super PACs paying top postage rates." The article continues, "Spending topped $28.9 million through the end of August, compared to $27.9 million for the entire election cycle in 2008..."

Regular readers of this column know what's coming next: the effects of inflation. Those 2008 dollars were worth more than 2012 dollars, so spending is actually down -1.4% compared to 2008. So what's the appropriate headline? "Real Spending on Mail in Elections Decreases, Adding to USPS Problems." It's likely that spending per registered voter is down as well; there were approximately 146 million registered voters in 2008. The number is likely to be higher in 2012, which means per voter postal spending is down, too.

The presidential elections are curious media snapshots, four years apart. They show how much the media landscape has changed. Primarily using data from the Census and from the Pew Internet Survey, I estimate that there are nearly 37 million more adults with broadband for the 2012 election than there were in 2008. While that's "only" a +28% increase, it's nearly as much as the raw increase in broadband adults from 2000 to 2004, when it grew more than 10x.

Three words are the topic of this column; they all have something in common. They describe decisions made by top management.

Focus
We often hear how important it is to focus on tasks at hand, or to have a singular focus, or that it's important to keep people's attention focused.

That's very important. There are many jobs, especially those on printing shop floors, where you can get seriously hurt even killed if you don't pay attention. What I'm referring to in this column is management focus, which can sometimes result in denial or myopia. Focus is a good intention; denial and myopia are along the road to management hell. Some companies say they're focused "like a laser beam" on their objectives, but they're actually either myopic or in denial.

It's critical to have a focus for your business, but it can't exclude a common sense understanding that there are events outside of that focus that should be taken into consideration. Focus allows you to perform your task efficiently, apply the right resources and efforts properly, and deliver the result according to plan. A lack of focus is not good.

For this reason focus has always been associated with something positive. It can have a downside, especially for upper management. There are always phenomena that are outside that focus that that are essential to know.

Think of a magician. A conjurer is focused on his task, which is to have his audience focus on something else so he can mislead us into thinking he has magical powers. Our focus deceives us because it is misdirected. With a magician, we agree to be deceived, and the skill of the magician is to make that misdirection so well hidden that only another trained magician will know what's happening.

By emphasizing focus, employees are less likely to report observations about what happens outside the boundaries of that focused area. For example, is it important that a sales person report that a client has a major e-marketing -program going on, or will that sales person be reminded to just go and sell printing and never mind that other stuff. "Don't look at that social media stuff over there; it will never amount to anything that affects our business."

Focus is good, and necessary. In economics, it comes from a concept called "division of labor," where a worker has a particular skill that is most productive when that skill is cultivated.
When everyone is specialized, much effort is expended getting everyone to work together. This is the purpose of management, as it coordinates all of the business' specialized functions, such as accounting, production, marketing, and others.

So focus is generally good, but there is a trade-off. Tasks that might be important in a changed marketplace are assigned lower priority or may not get done at all. My favorite example is the focus on the number of sales calls per day that many sales managers require. Deep knowledge of a prospect or customer may never be developed. This is how printers of a decade ago could say with a straight face that the Internet was not hurting their business, but in saying that, they demonstrated that they had no insight into their clients' the longer term planning. Focus needs to be balanced, and most executives realize that too late.

Denial
The dark underside of focus is denial. In my consulting experience, I have seen this all too often. Some companies detect that market conditions have changed, but they keep working with the same budgets and staffing until directed otherwise. To be proactive is to go against management. To go along with flawed management is to have the plausible deniability of "just following orders" or to avoid being labeled as a discontented worker.

Denial is at its worst when facts speak otherwise. Many of the industry's old guard referred to digital media, and especially social media, as "unproven" and kept referring to print as a "foundation" for media communications when the marketplace was uncategorically behaving otherwise. (After all, an idea is the foundation of a communications plan; without the idea there is nothing to communicate. Print was just one tool among many.)

I have often wondered what would have happened if more of the time in the early 2000s was spent encouraging printers to start the media transition of their businesses rather than urging them to defend business models that were losing relevance. All of the warnings were there. When it came time to attack, many of the old guard ran back into their caves. The marketplace punishes denial harshly. Entrepreneurial skills are defined by decisions about the future in ambiguous situations. Transitions are, by definition, ambiguous.

Denial has several meanings. I'm not referring to the good type of denial that is part of delayed gratification that builds character or the denial involved in saving for a rainy day. No, this is the denial of hoping something in the business environment will go away if you just ignore it.

Denial is purposeful. It is not focus. It is a deliberate misdirection of actions to nonproductive activities. It's magic of the worst kind. "Pay attention to your job, and just do what you're asked" is often the answer rather than, "What are you seeing in the market?" or "What are customers saying?" For that to happen, you need to cultivate employees who are willing to ask these questions and have the ability to answer them. In an organization that denies, the questions are never even considered.

Nor am I referring to denial that is a "not now" answer. There are times to concentrate on what you're doing, and delay dealing with trends or market conditions until there is a better time to address them. The denial I am referring to is the "not ever" kind.

Why is there denial? Sometimes management refuses to admit that it has no ability to respond to a change in the marketplace. If they don't understand what's happening, denying it exists is an unfortunate and corrosive reaction.

Myopia
While denial is willful, myopia is not. Myopia is focus caused by an innate lack of curiosity. It's not that things can't ever blindside you; of course they can. Even the most astute business executives can be surprised. Myopic executives are always being surprised and are always mired in uncertainty. It's the long-term trends and their warnings that are summarily dismissed that become the problems. The most common answer for the myopic executive's business problems is that it's a bad economy. I'm still finding executives who think the iPad is just a fad.

Healthy or Unhealthy? That is the question…
Which is it in your organization? Is your emphasis on the focus that is the healthy kind? Or is it the unhealthy kind that turns into denial or myopia that misses important trends and opportunities?

The ounce of prevention for these problems is supposed to be a healthy planning process. For many printers, "planning" only means budgeting for departments and preparing financials for a bank. If you have found that business is sagging and behind expectations, your planning process is flawed. No, it's not the economy. Planning is supposed to help us detect market changes and navigate them no matter what the economic conditions are. If your planning process is not doing that, and only measuring the past, it's time for a change.

Transitions require a robust planning process. That process should not be dominated by bureaucratic minutia, but by a comprehensive and forward-looking assessment of client communications trends, analysis of prospects, competition from printers and other organizations, and the investigation of alternative business models. Who should be in these meetings? Top management, obviously, but also customers and prospects, suppliers, and advisors. Their presence may not be deep into your company details, but should include general 1:1 discussions about their businesses, their problems, and especially how they reach out to the marketplace to retain and acquire customers and to build their brands.

So... which is it... focus, denial, or myopia?