p.1 The challenge of allocation transcends leadership.
It is so fundamental that it can be regarded as primal - a fundamental driver of
evolutionary success.
p.1 It is widely accepted that competition for scarce resources is
the primary engine of natural selection. Yet it might be more accurate to say that allocation is the fundamental driver
of evolution.
p.1 It is from the fundamental challenge of allocation that
the cornerstones of management responsibility are derived - strategic planning, budgeting, organization design are
all at their heart questions of allocation.
p.1 Despite its importance, allocation has not received much direct
attention in the management literature. It is a topic worthy of more attention. If you haven't explored how to do
better that which is fundamental, how can you reasonably expect to do well those things that are derived from the fundamentals?
p.1 At its core, all of strategy is a fundamentally a question
of allocation.
p.2 One way to describe allocation is in terms of attention. When
something gets my attention, I look at it. In so doing, I limit my ability to look at (or see) other things. Allocation
means doing one thing at the cost of not doing other things. I give the thing attention by expending time and energy on it.
I may "invest" some of my capital in it too. There are different levels of attention, and those different levels reflect variations
in the allocation of time, energy, and capital.
p.2 "...Approximately two hundred messages flood managers' desktops
daily. Welcome to the attention economy, in which the new scarcest resource isn't ideas or even talent, but
attention itself...problems for businesspeople lie on both sides of the attention equation: on getting and holding
the attention of information-flooded employees, consumers, and stockholders, and on parceling out their own attention in the
face of overwhelming options. The resolution: learn to manage this critical yet finite resource, or fail."
p.3 The essence of leadership can be distilled to a single word -
allocation. When the alarm clock sounds, leadership at its core is about the allocation of scarce resources to the
best opportunities.
