I believe the most critical leadership skill of this coming decade will be bandwidth management the ability to purposefully and intentionally manage your time, energy and attention. Are we ready? My own research suggests that we have our work cut out for us.

A shocking 73% of leaders feel that their teams do not intentionally manage their bandwidth often enough. Less than 9% see their team members always or almost always actively managing their bandwidth. This is data I collected from 139 HR leaders and executives during a recent webinar delivered on behalf of the World Business and Executive Coach Summit. The results were troubling but also unsurprising and consistent with what I see daily.

Poor Bandwidth Management Impacts Individuals And Organizations

Since the digital boom in the late 1990s, we've been increasingly overconsuming and becoming consumed. We're consumed by information and uncertainty. We're also consumed by the pure fatigue of trying to keep up in our always-on, always-connected work world. In the process, we've stopped managing how and where we spend our time, energy and attention. This has grave consequences for individuals and organizations.

On an individual level, the impact of failing to manage bandwidth is far-reaching. It leaves individuals distracted, tired and struggling to keep up with daily tasks. But there are also longer-term and complex consequences for failing to manage bandwidth that impact not only individuals but groups. Consider the following scenario.

You bring 12 people into a room with polarized political views, and you ask them to come to a consensus on a controversial issue. If they had a few weeks to develop relationships, hash out problems together and gain perspective, they might eventually discover their common ground. If they only have a few hours and no time to gain perspective, it is far more likely that these people will stand their ground. In other words, confirmation bias (a tendency to cling to information that reinforces our assumptions) will also kick in. In the end, they won't only fail to collaborate but may also end up in an increasingly polarized situation.

When we fail to manage our bandwidth, we not only risk running ourselves into the ground, we risk compromising our ability to collaborate, weigh different opinions and see things from a new perspective. For leaders in business who must take multiple perspectives into account this is a serious concern.

The Cost To Businesses Is High

To understand how low bandwidth impacts individuals and businesses, it is useful to look at the current business landscape.

While exact numbers vary, we know that automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are currently upending how we work and that there will be casualties. According to the World Economic Forum, up to 30% of existing jobs across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations may be lost to automation by the mid-2030s. We also know that some responses are likely going to be more effective than others. For example, re-skilling one's existing workforce offers a much higher return on investment than hiring new workers to fill the higher-skill jobs connected to automation and AI. One McKinsey study found that on average, replacing an employee can cost 20-30% of an annual salary, while re-skilling costs less than 10%.

Of course, if you want to retrain rather than let go of thousands of employees, you need to have the foresight to do so before you reach a point of crisis. The problem is that all signs indicate that most leaders aren't ready for this change. With low bandwidth, they are struggling to manage day-to-day operations rather than get ahead of the automation and AI wave.

Effective bandwidth management has just a few key components, but understanding how to bandwidth management works and how to put it into practice is critical.

The first step is to build awareness. Ask yourself, what is your energy, attention and focus level?

Second, reflect on what enables you to be at your best and what's draining you. For example, heighten your awareness about the things that may be draining your energy, attention and focus. This step is all about auditing how you're working and what is and is not supporting your ability to focus on issues that truly matter.

Third, start building your agility. We're living and working in a new world. Tasks once carried out by humans are increasingly being carried out by machines. This even holds true for a growing number of high-level decision-making tasks. To survive, you have to hone the ability to adapt, respond and adjust (that is, you have to learn to work differently).

The final step entails taking action. Now that you know what makes you tick and drains your energy, start taking concrete steps to change how you work. For example, this may mean putting up filters, so you're being bombarded with less information daily, and proactively delegating more work to other members of your team.

The bottom line is simple. Leaders who want to proactively prepare for the significant disruptions the 2020s will bring across sectors don't need a crystal ball to predict the future. What they need is bandwidth to gain perspective and proactively prepare for these inevitable changes.

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Using Bandwidth Management To Get In Front Of The AI And Automation Waves - Forbes