A field manual for the modern executive
How Leaders Turn Fragmented Attention into Coherent Results
Your calendar shows four commitments. Your day delivers forty. DEFRAG synthesizes five management traditions into one operating discipline — so the few results that matter get the attention they require.
“It is not that we have too little time. It is that we waste much of what we have.”— SENECA
The problem
An executive’s obligations multiply with the size and ambition of the institution. The mind available to meet them stays one mind. It is sharp for a few hours a day. It can hold one difficult matter at a time. When every input to a process grows except one, the fixed input becomes the constraint.
None of this feels like failure. It feels like busyness, and our working culture calls busyness a virtue. It is actually a tax: the compounding difference between what an institution’s attention could produce and what its fragmented state actually produces. No line in the accounts reports it, but every line eventually feels it.
The coherence chain — every broken link is fragmentation
Inside the book
An introduction names the tax. Twelve chapters install the systems that remove it.
PART I
The first system is personal. Clear the mind of commitments, then make the calendar tell the truth.
PART II
Choose a few results that matter. Find causes before actions. Decide well when evidence cannot decide for you.
PART III
Stabilize the work that repeats. Keep problems and decisions at the right level. Develop people through real responsibility.
PART IV
Three systems, one pulse. Reviews keep attention, results, and capability connected. Years of the pulse produce compounding.
The synthesis
Each tradition solved one piece. DEFRAG connects them where they intersect — and results follow the intersections.
The Nature of Managerial Work
The honest portrait of the executive day: fragmented, interrupted, verbal. The diagnosis the method must survive.
Getting Things Done
Open loops, capture, clarification. The trusted external system that clears the mind of commitments.
The Effective Executive
The time record, contribution, strengths, one decision at a time. The disciplines of effectiveness.
O Verdadeiro Poder
Goals as gaps, analysis before action, routine management. The machine that makes results repeatable.
Poor Charlie’s Almanack
The bias catalogue and inversion. Judgment for the decisions evidence cannot make for you.
Appendix B
Every tool in the book fits on a single page — designed to be copied, filled in, and kept in the operating rhythm.
The author
Igor A. Bello Tasic is a professor, strategy advisor, former Booz Allen and Booz & Company consultant, and experienced entrepreneur. Over more than twenty-five years, he has worked with executives and organizations across Europe, Latin America, the United States, and the Middle East on strategy, operating models, transformation, innovation, and performance improvement.
He founded Startup Europe Week, which grew into an international initiative spanning more than three hundred cities in over fifty countries. He currently advises owners, chief executives, and boards on consequential decisions, management discipline, governance, and growth.
igortasic.com →The manuscript is with readers now
For publishing inquiries, rights, speaking, or an advance copy of the manuscript, reach the author at igortasic.com.