Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

29 Sep 2008

The Value of Vision and Goal Setting

Optometry by S Nada

Optometry by S Nada

I read something fascinating at the weekend that really made me think. In David Allen’s book ‘Ready for Anything’, he entitles chapter 26 ‘The value of a future goal is the present change it fosters’: ‘It’s value is not about achieving something in time, but rather about how it changes the substance and quality of the decisions you’re making in this moment’…. ‘Imagining a positive outcome forward in time provides a believability of the scenario and matures the consciousness. In spite of ourselves, we begin to act as if it has truth’

Now how powerful is that?: It doesn’t matter what the goal is, or whether it is achieved. What matters is the present change that it catalyses and that this change is of value to you.

This thought was then compunded by further reading of Claxton’s Hare Brain (yes, I know it’s taking me forever to read)

Claxton made a comment about how the unconscious can take a set of inputs and act as if they were true. It will not question in certain circumstances the validity of the inputs unless they are tagged or raised within the conscious as being invalid: ‘the more vividly you can get someone to fantasise, the more likely they are subsequently to misrepresent this experience as a true memory’

To tie the two together therefore for you to see what I’m getting at:

1. We create a fully formed vision of a successful outcome (particularly using NLP techniques)

2. We consider in the first instance that this is a valuable vision or goal

3. We ensure that the vision or goal is as wild or inspiring as we want it to be (but we have to believe it to avoid the conscious stopping movement towards it)

4. We start to act as if it were true and unconsciously do all that we can in the present to take action to deliver

Job done.

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Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, NLP, Psychology, Vision and Goal Setting and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
25 Sep 2008
1 Comment

The Role of Reading and Knowledge in Personal Development

My thoughts keep occasionally swirling back to this topic. A number of reasons:

1. I’m always interested in further developing my knowledge

2. I’m always seeking the most effective way of doing things, including (1) above

3. I’m always challenging myself on how I’m currently approaching things.

I’m trying to put the deliberate practice into my own self development.

In the series of talks that I’ve been doing at Madgex for the ideas and learnings programme, I’ve had a purpose or focus for my learning. The research and knowledge gathering that I’ve done has been done against an operational need.

There seemed to be a view that it was possible to get too big for reading that has gnawed at me since I wrote the post. I’m still hoping that I misinterpreted the article I read.

All of these things together have lead me to wonder two things:

1. Do the consumers of information always need an ‘operative or operational purpose’ to maximise the effectiveness of their consumption and subsequent usage. Knowledge in advance of need being an inefficient use of time?

2. Does the nature of both academic and mainstream publishing mean that to have a chance of being published there has to be a niche focus or positioning? That the lack of breadth to subject matter is a direct result of a bias for differentiation? (with due reference to a conversation with C. Turner for prompting this thought)

The impact that this has on learning and personal development is interesting. Does the effort that we have to put into assimilating the pockets of information aid learning by increasing engagement through the value add of linkage?

To be frank, I think I might be off on one ;-)

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Posted in Deliberate Practice, Knowledge Management, Learning, Psychology and tagged , , , ,
22 Sep 2008

Relaxing into Change

I’m working through a lot of change at the moment. Interestingly it’s more about corporate change than personal change (i.e. myself), but as I’m planning for and leading the change at Madgex it’s actually nearly all about people change.

It’s a fairly straightforward observation that the change will happen through people. That without their buy-in, change remains locked in managers words and in documents and project plans.

I have considered change in a number of posts, and over the last few weeks have been digging around for as much management theory as I can. A few things have struck me:

  1. I could be looking in the wrong place, but the theory content seems to be quite thin when I had expected depth. Particularly when you consider my earlier point about the centrality of change happening through people. I obviously haven’t been looking in the right places for the psychological and motivational theory linkages which should be at the heart of all the planning
  2. A very good, positive focus on talking: both in terms of gathering feedback and aligning expectations. Indeed, the balance between the leadership role of inspiring and aligning people behind a motivating vision of the future and the management of the operational and functional ‘realities’ is fascinating
  3. A balance is starting to appear. A balance between trying to plan for change, and relaxing into change.
To explain my third point: it is starting to feel like change actually happens when an internal tipping point is achieved. You can try and impact as many of the elements that can contribute to change as you can consciously identify. However, it feels like there is a lot that has to fall into place. That has to shift internally to a good place that is aligned with the future desired changed state. A lot of the work that takes place consciously feels like it prepares the ground for the internal alignment/ realignment. But it can’t actually cause the change. A period of percolation and feeling for fit seems to be required
And it is during this stage that, unless the conversations are continuing throughout, degrees of misalignment can get fused in which will distort the future changed state

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Posted in Business, Change, Communication, Leadership and tagged , , | Leave a comment

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