Have you noticed how often people label themselves?
 

We all understand the problems caused by labeling others: stereotyping, racial profiling and all the evils of mindless prejudice. But what about self-stereotyping? What about the way people ‘profile’ themselves? “I’m just not that kind of person,” we say. “I’m not the thoughtful type.” “I’m not good at organizing.” “I have trouble with relationships.” “I’ve never been good at schoolwork.” “I’m not up to that. I’m more of a hands-on person.”

Yet, just as the labels we apply to others can prevent us from seeing them clearly or appreciating their strengths and value, so the labels you learn to apply to yourself will limit and block your understanding of your own strengths and potential. They will hold you back and limit your sense of what is possible for you.

All labels come with values and beliefs about what you can do and what you cannot—and need not even try. They prescribe the things you can do, say and develop in your life. Worst of all, they give instant reasons why you are different from the rest of us. Peeling off those labels, replacing them with words that create space for growth to opening your mind, is a powerful way to change your life for the better.

It’s worth looking at some typical self-applied labels and seeing what they might really mean and how hanging onto them could affect you.

• “I’m just not that kind of person.” What kind of person? A statement like this manages to combine self-stereotyping and stereotyping of others in a mere seven words. How can that be helpful to anyone? Suggesting that there are ‘kinds of people’ reduces us all to categories—including yourself. Surely there are just people? Why should there be types, except to save us from seeing them as individuals?
• “I’m not the thoughtful type.” Can you think? Then you are. This is mostly a feeble excuse for not making any effort to consider things carefully, while shifting the blame for all the consequent mistakes onto something convenient, like your genetic make-up.
• “I’m not good at organizing.” Another feeble excuse, usually for a combination of laziness and the pleasure that comes from letting someone else organize for you. Everyone can organize. All it takes is effort and care. If you claim to be a poor organizer, what you are really saying is that you cannot be bothered to make the effort and you don’t care anyway. If that’s true—and why not?—just be honest and say so.
• “I have trouble with relationships.” You and the rest of mankind. Is that any reason not to try and get better at them?
• “I’m not very good at tough decisions.” No one is. That’s why they’re tough.
• “I’ve never been good at schoolwork.” I have heard this excuse so often. What it really means is that the person cannot be bothered to try to learn anything new. The fact that you weren’t good at school—perhaps 20 or 30 years ago—has nothing to do with it. There could have been all kinds of reasons for that, from adolescent rebellion to lousy teachers. Why let it limit you today?
• “I’m not up to that. ”Afraid. Can’t be bothered to try. Dishonest too. If you don’t want to do it, say so. Don’t invent a catch-all excuse that implies you’re being prevent from trying by anything other than your own choice.

Even supposedly positive labels can be limiting. What about these?

• “I’m more of a hands-on person.” This usually means you would like someone to tell you what to do, explain exactly how to do it and then take the blame if it goes wrong. If you have hands, you’re a hands-on person. If you’re only a hands-on person, that must mean you don’t have a brain as well as hands. Come off it. It may be comforting to pretend you can’t think for yourself, but it’s never true.

• “I’m just a regular guy.” Define irregular. Does this mean you don’t have three legs, nine eyes and hail from the planet Zebran? We’re just about all ‘regular’ men and women. What this near-meaningless phrase usually represents is simply getting your excuses in first.
• “I’ve done pretty well, even though I never had any formal training.” Means: “I do as well as I can without trying to learn anything more, challenging my current ideas or working at getting better. Luckily for me, experience has taught me to do some kind of half-decent job without making any greater effort, so I leave it at that. This allows me to forget that I can find some training, improve my education or even read a few good books on the subject any time I want.”

It’s well worth taking time to sort through the automatic labels you apply to yourself without thinking. Are they true? Are they even helpful? What if you took off any label that’s limiting you and making you feel stuck?

A label is a kind of permission slip. With it, you can do some things, but are prohibited from others. Without it, you cannot even start. Let it go and the sense of burden it causes will fall away.

Taking away every self-applied label lets you find the room to experiment, to try things out and play with fresh ideas and wider possibilities. It also takes away some of your inner critic’s most effective fire-power—and that has to be worth a great deal.

Technorati Tags: stereotypes, self-limitation, inner critic, low self-esteem, holding yourself back

Managing risk is supposed to be a key aspect of leadership. Why are most so poor at doing it?
 

Leaders and senior executives are rubbish at assessing risk. The financial crisis and economic meltdown prove it. Even top bankers, whose whole job is surely most about risk, got it so badly wrong that they not only killed the goose that was laying the golden eggs to satisfy their greed, they came perilously close to cooking everyone else’s goose as well.

Of course, leaders don’t accept how bad they are at understanding the risks they undertake. If they did, they might well be able to do something about it. Instead they do what all macho managers do to avoid admitting a weakness—they resort to mindless bravado.

This only makes matters worse. Instead of slowing down, or shying away from risks they don’t understand, they plunge ahead to show what tough guys they are. Then, when it all comes crashing down around their heads, they indulge in the other age-old custom of all bullies and egotists—blaming someone else.

You have to accept that human beings in general have a poor ability to estimate risk accurately—especially if they do it based on emotions, as most do—but that’s not an adequate excuse. Leaders are paid to manage risk. It’s one of the things they claim to be able to do better than the average Joe. If they cannot do better than anyone else, why pay them so much?

Why leaders don’t grasp risk properly

These are some of the commonest reasons why leaders get it wrong when it comes to understanding the risks that they are taking:

• They don’t grasp the laws of probability. Rather than take the time and trouble to delve into what it is, admittedly, an arcane discipline, they rely on mythology and rules of thumb. Since, however, no macho manager ever admits to not knowing anything, they either ignore all the statistics are telling them or ‘interpret’ them to match their own biases. Fire, it is said, is a good servant but a bad master. That’s even more true of statistics.
• They make decisions emotionally. How you feel about something has nothing to do with the actual likelihood that it will happen. This is the mistake gamblers make. Winning makes them feel good, so they wager more next time. Losing makes them feel angry, so they wager more and ‘double up’ to get their money back. Few stop to work out the exact possibilities of winning and losing.
• They let their egos rule. Many mergers and acquisitions come about, not from business logic, but to feed the ego of the CEO. That’s probably why 70% or so fail. Betting big on a merger makes those at the top feel important, whether or not the decision makes any sense from a business point of view. There will always be bankers and consultants eager to prove it does. Those guys make so much money from feeding the grandiosity of CEOs they can always justify anything that produces fees for them.
• They don’t understand the figures and so give too much respect to experts. The phrase ‘scientific management’ has become the curse of our time. No matter how crazy the idea, it can nearly always be sold to a boardroom full of professional leaders, provided it is wrapped up in scientific jargon and supported by sufficient tables of data. Few around the boardroom table understand any of it. They decide on whether or not they like the expert and find the presentation sufficiently entertaining. (Privately, I suspect they judge the strength of the evidence by weight. The heavier the report, the more trust they put in it.)
• They treat anecdotes as evidence. You have to put much of the blame for this failing on the media. We have become so used to news reports filled with ‘human interest stories’ instead of facts or logical argument, many people have lost the ability to see a difference between them. Management books use anecdotes, trotted out one after another, to support what the author is claiming. Stories are much more entertaining than logic or data, and a good deal of management writing today has long ago crossed the border between instruction and entertainment. Much of it should be re-shelved under ‘comic books’.

Even when leaders do try to grapple with the evidence, they still get it wrong.

The human mind, as I said, is poor at understanding probability. There are three patterns of thought which are especially effective at leading us into incorrect decisions:

• ‘The proximity effect’ bedevils our understanding of cause and effect. When two things occur closely together, in time or distance, we have a tendency to assume the one caused the other. As a result, people misunderstand what is going on and apply their efforts to dealing with things which are more or less irrelevant to what they want to achieve.
• ‘The recency effect’ describes the way that recent events appear larger and more important to us than those which happened some time ago. People who have just taken a risk and succeeded are more likely to take another one. Those who fail will hang back, even if they have an excellent record of success in the past. (This effect , by the way, explains why the small error you made yesterday erases from your boss’s mind all the good things you’ve done in the previous twelve months.)
• ‘The familiarity effect’ makes us underestimate the risks associated with something we know, and overestimate those associated with something unfamiliar. It explains why doing what we have always done feels less of a risk than change—even if it’s obvious that what we have done in the past won’t work and new ideas are necessary.

The mythology of conventional management is that a combination of statistical analysis, past experience and the pragmatic application of a handful of management models renders most business risks negligible. The reality is that conventional management’s obsession with speed, substitution of action for thought, tendency to confront uncertainty with bravado, emotional bias, and confusion of egotism with leadership, has made dealing with risk into a quagmire which has already swallowed up billions upon billions of dollars.

Ordinary humans are poor at assessing risk and usually accept it. Managers are supposed to be professionals at risk management, so deny any weakness in their approach. Yet, in recent years, most executives have been no better at handling risk that the man or woman in the street—often considerably worse. Isn’t it time to acknowledge this weakness in conventional management attitudes and put a stop to it?

Technorati Tags: risk, choice, managing risk, making decisions, emotional decisions, management myths

“Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason.“ (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
 

We live in an angry time. People are angry with politicians, greedy bankers, unfeeling bosses, colleagues who ‘don’t get it’, careless drivers, and especially anyone ‘different’. Some are just angry with one another. What we rarely grasp is that our anger is really aimed within.

While what provokes anger may be outside us, the actual source is always within. Anger is a powerful emotion. When we cannot contain the energy of anger, we act it out on other people or things. Most of the time we are so afraid of it we try to deny or hide it. Sometimes we direct in inwards.

Although, like all emotions, anger is normal, when you suppress it and allow it to build up inside, it saps your strength, causes yet more stress, destroys relationships and stops you feeling happy.

Anger is also part of an emotional force we need to spur us on to achieve what we want and carry us along through life’s challenges. Dissipating our ‘fire energy’ in anger is a waste.

The ‘fire energy’ of anger

Anger is an emotional energy. It’s not a thought, idea or belief—not mental or intellectual. It’s an energy you experience as much in the cells of your body as in your head.

Next time you feel angry, notice what happens—how you tense your muscles, how the blood flows to make your face red, how your heart pounds and you feel hot. For millennia, people have associated anger with fire. In Eastern traditions and Chinese medicine, it is often seen as an aspect of ‘fire energy’—a primal energy associated with power and strength.

Most people have never learned how to cope with, or contain, their anger without doing themselves harm. Instead, they try to suppress it. Yet if anger is misdirected or blocked like this—turned inwards, held down hard and allowed to smolder away—it builds up until it eventually bursts out in ways that are even more destructive and harmful.

Maybe the greatest, and most misunderstood, stimulus for anger is a set of false expectations about life, usually associated with emotional immaturity. Many people expect to stay on the ‘happy’ end of the happiness-unhappiness continuum permanently and become angry because life is tough. They don’t get what they believe they are entitled to from life. As a result, they get mad at the universe. Then, since the universe is impervious to their feelings, they take their anger out on whoever is nearest and easiest to

Dealing with this ‘fire energy’ positively

You usually feel anger in the abdomen or belly. That’s also where you feel strength. In the West too, we have expressions that refer to the location of ‘fire energy’ here. Cowards have “no guts.” They lack “intestinal fortitude” and “have no stomach for” whatever it is. The powerful person has “fire in their belly.” Positive ‘fire energy’ is manifested as strength, courage, steadfastness, drive, and commitment. It supports us to be fearless. It gives us ‘spirit’. Lacking it, we find it hard to persevere and forward the action of our lives. We become exhausted and lack-luster.

Whenever we give in to anger, we misuse our ‘fire energy’ to ignite anger in place of courageous action. In place of strength and power, we are caught up in fear and bitterness. All that energy goes within, until we burn out. Misusing our ‘fire energy’ and turning it inside, we burn away our liveliness, our happiness and our self-confidence.

Turning your ‘fire energy’ into positive channels will generate strength, courage and confidence. Instead of wasting it in anger, use it to feel empowered and open to facing life’s challenges and pressures with a sense of curiosity and freedom.

When you do feel angry, rather than ‘acting out’, playing the victim or becoming abusive, try breathing deeply and sensing the heat build-up in your body. Welcome that ‘fire energy’ as natural, ready to be used for positive as well as negative ends. The more you contain and re-direct your ‘fire energy’, the more centered you will feel—less subject to the pull to waste your energy in becoming angry.

Expectations and emotional maturity

Much of your happiness depends on setting yourself realistic expectations about life. When things go wrong—as they surely will from time to time—it’s not all about life being unfair or bad luck and bad karma.

Happiness is linked to growth and that does not does not take place smoothly, or only on the happiness end of the spectrum. Growth demands facing challenges and struggles. Without them, you cannot build up your capacity to be strong, courageous and confident. You need things to push against to develop those ‘muscles’.

That’s why you need to use your ‘fire energy’ positively and stop wasting it on anger. Happiness and satisfaction arise when you consciously contain your ‘fire energy’ and keep it for better purposes.

This week’s food-for-thought questions are:

• How do you react to setbacks? Do you tend to be whiny, passive-aggressive or explosive? Do you manipulate, bully, or seek to ‘take it out’ on others, physically or verbally? Does your anger ever lead to hostility, abuse, anxiety or depression? How does this show you are using your ‘fire energy’?
• Have you noticed the physiological symptoms you experience when you’re angry? Do you get head, neck, back, or jaw pain? Irregular heartbeat? Sweating? Upset stomach? What is this telling you about where your anger is being directed?
• What emotional beliefs lead you to react with anger? Think about a person, place, or issue that really pushes your anger button. What is it about that person or situation makes you angry? What is your belief or story that you use to rationalize or justify your anger? Is it even true?
• Have you noticed how the aftermath of anger leaves you feeling weakened? How that ‘fire energy’ has been consumed by your anger? Where else could you use that energy to feel strengthened and empowered instead?
• What do you expect from life? Is it realistic? Are false expectations and feelings of entitlement setting you up? Are they stoking your ‘fire energy’ into anger and wasting it?

Technorati Tags: anger, emotions, energy, coping with setbacks, expectations, realism

Awareness is the ‘secret sauce’ of personal change
 

Most people experience problems in their life at work and at home—it’s part of the human condition. Awareness is what allows you to see either what’s creating the problem, and what you can do about it, or recognize there is nothing to be done and you have to put up with it. Each has its value.

Somewhere around 99% of people live on autopilot in a world of routine with a static level of awareness. Because they currently face no drastic changes, and feel they are moderately successful as they are, they continue to do what they do now, in the way they presently do it. Any counter-productive and dysfunctional behaviors they have—and they will have some, we all do—are ignored.

They are blind to what is going on. Their attitude limits even necessary change, let alone new information or new experiences.

Their awareness has come to a standstill.

The 1 or 2% who are proactively seeking greater awareness don’t wait to be forced into change. They go to meet it. They read, attend classes, welcome new ideas and perspectives, try new things, seek out others different from themselves and look for challenge and stimulation.

As they do this, their awareness expands. They aren’t so focused on ‘me’. They stand at a higher point on the mountain, more able to see how their past has created their present and how their present is creating their future.

How does awareness work?

As you increase your awareness, you will gain clarity on the patterns of cause and effect in your life. You’ll understand how effects flow from internal beliefs and assumptions about reality. Many people discover what they thought was reality is just an effect of what they believed was true—not reality at all. A deeper awareness lets you grasp how your thoughts, actions and beliefs combine to create life’s experience through an ‘internal’ reality that determines how you feel, how you behave and how you give meaning to whatever happens ‘out there’.

If you do this, you’ll give yourself much more choice over what happens in your life. Awareness creates choice. As you watch your thoughts, feelings and what they lead to, you’ll learn how to take more control over them. Life won’t just happen to you as you bumble along. You’ll become an active partner in bringing it about.

The downsides of being unaware

Being unaware and going through life on autopilot means carrying your past into your future—repeating the same patterns more or less blindly. People who are unaware have no grasp of their internal map of reality. They live unconsciously. They carry forward the bad along with the good and never know why.

If you aren’t aware of the may links between your internal map of reality and your behavior, you have no choice in how you behave—no awareness of the consequences of thoughts or actions. You’ll repeat self-limiting ideas and behaviors over and over again—even those you know are self-destructive.

For the unaware, all this is happening on autopilot. They are unconsciously self-selecting the people, circumstances, events and interpretations that allow it to happen, while unconsciously rejecting everything that may point to the contrary.

Awareness is not the same as knowing

Being aware of what is going on in your mind is not the same as knowing that you do something. This is important. The unaware know they engage in self-limiting and self-sabotaging behavior, but they don’t stop because they can’t grasp what is causing it to happen. They may want to change—desperately—but feel it’s not possible.

Awareness is seeing that what you do ‘inside’ creates an outcome— and seeing that while you’re doing it.

Take belief as an example. A belief is a thought you think is true. To feel secure with that ‘truth’, your mind locks into an unconscious circular pattern of perception and thinking that goes like this:

This is true for me and I want it to stay that way, so I’ll unconsciously behave in a way that allows my belief to be right. I won’t notice how I focus first on people, events and circumstances that act as confirming evidence. I’ll unthinkingly treat those with different ideas as jerks, so I’ll be able to ignore them and continue to attract people and circumstances that support my pre-existing belief. Should that fail, I’ll blindly interpret my experience in a way that makes me right; and if I find there are still numerous interpretations available to me, I’ll unconsciously chose the one that supports my belief.

If you become aware, you’ll notice this as it’s taking place—which means you’ll be able to intervene and turn into another direction. Those who are unaware only grasp what they’ve done after the event. It’s that, “Oh no! I did it again!” feeling. By then, it’s too late., even if they are able towork out what caused the problem.

Awareness comes with a cost

The usual upshot of becoming more aware is that you discover what a good deal of you have taken for granted to be ‘true’ is illusion. If you cannot face this, as many cannot, awareness is not for you.

Becoming aware also takes effort, purposefulness and consistent practice. Only if you choose to pay the price will you experience a world where self-limiting and self-sabotaging thoughts are caught before they inflict any more harm. A world where you can let go and suffer less pain, since much of it is caused by trying to hang on for dear life to old ways. A world where the causes of anxiety, stress, depression and a host of other negative feelings are made clear and open to change. By coming to terms with the cause-and-effect nature of life, you’ll be aware of how your internal state affects your experience and make more conscious, healthier choices.

A strategy to gain awareness

Here are some practices to support your capacity to become more aware.

1. Daily meditation.
2. Spending ten minutes several times each day observing your internal pictures, scripts and dialogs, and noticing how they affect your experience. Play back the ‘tape of your day’ in the evening. Re-visit an experience or two and observe how your internal patterns affected the outcome.
3. Explore your internal state when you experience strong feelings. What goes on in you at those times? What beliefs, thoughts, feelings or emotions fuel the fire?
4. Practice, practice, practice. Practice will make you, if not perfect, much better. You’ll discover a new ‘you’. You won’t create self-sabotaging states and more without seeing what you’re doing.

Observing your unconscious internal processes with an active curiosity lets you discover what doesn’t serve you. When you let go of those self-limiting and self-sabotaging thoughts, you’ll experience a fresh sense of aliveness and enthusiasm. All that’s needed is a deep awareness that your life doesn’t have to be this way.

Here are some questions for self-reflection:

• How well do you know yourself? Are you aware of your thoughts and emotions? Do you see how they automatically produce your experience?
• Do you feel uncomfortable with anything that does not conform to your current beliefs or ideas of reality? Do you unconsciously search for ways to prove these existing views are right? What if they aren’t?
• Are you open to discovering new possibilities and insights about yourself? Are you willing to give up any belief or premise that you find is no longer serving you? Where might that take you?
• Would you say you are more or less self-aware than you were last year, two years ago, or five years ago? Remember, awareness is being conscious of what’s happening deeply inside you when it’s happening, not just knowing more about yourself after the event. Are you growing or standing still?

Technorati Tags: awareness, change, growth, testing your beliefs, finding new ways, coming alive

Sometimes positive thinking gets in the way
 

One of the things I find tough is coping with people who suffer with ‘delusional optimism’. It’s not that I object to people looking on the bright side. It’s the extent to which I see people hurting themselves and their prospects by doing so as a matter of principle that bothers me.

Many people love to think of themselves as ‘can do’ types. They revel in the notion that—somehow—thinking positively will automatically produce a life of ease and plenty. The ‘American Dream’—the idea that enough hard work will get you anything you want—is endearing, even though it is, unfortunately, wrong-headed. If you truly want to find success, especially in the world of work, it’s better to approach everything by expecting failure. Not ultimate failure, but plenty of it along the way.

‘Delusional optimism’

‘Delusional optimism’ is a habitual failure to accept reality, unless it matches the positive outcome you want. Like Positive Thinking, it’s a way of trying to fool your mind into seeing something ‘good’ instead of whatever is actually there. It’s imposing your own standards of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ on events, which have no such qualities: they are what they are. As William Shakespeare wrote: “It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” In this case, our own thinking, which may be confused, poorly informed or simply wishful.

Delusional optimism causes people to either ignore or down-play risk, and so becomes an additional risk factor in its own right. Russell Ackoff, in Management in Small Doses wrote : “The cost of preparing for critical events that do not occur is generally very small in comparison to the cost of being unprepared for those that do.”

Like the nonsense peddled as the ‘Law of Attraction’, delusional optimism works by persuading people that wishing for something hard enough will magically cause it to happen; or that staying positive will, equally magically, prevent bad things coming along.

It would be nice to be able to work magic, but the only kind that exists in our world is the kind you see on the stage; and that takes hard work, years of practice and is based on deluding the audience into seeing what you tell them to see, not what is actually happening.

Refusing to give up

Another element in delusional optimism is a dogged refusal to give up. This also seems more revered in the USA than elsewhere in the world. It too causes unnecessary pain and loss as people go on pouring time, effort and resources into projects that ‘died’ long ago.

A while ago, I wrote a post about the damage that can be done by allowing ‘hardworking idiots’ to run things (“Are today’s organizations creating hardworking Idiots?”). It is the most popular article I have ever written for this site. The damage that can be done by people who match delusional optimism with enthusiasm, hard work and incompetence is terrifying.

Why it’s better to expect failure before you begin—then keep trying just the same

Failure is a part of everyday reality. You try things and sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. It’s extremely unlikely that you will succeed in everything you do, and equally unlikely that you will fail. Life is a mixture. Sometimes up, sometimes down.

If you expect some failure before you begin, you can plan for it. It won’t take you by surprise. You don’t, of course, expect to fail at everything—that is as irrational as expecting to succeed all the time—but you do expect that some things won’t turn out as you want them to.

“Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play.” ~ Thomas Hardy

Creating realistic expectations

Many people have pointed out that a good deal of the trouble we have all gone through in the past few months has been caused by organizations and bosses setting up completely unrealistic expectations. By claiming to be able to deliver endless growth in profits, they produced no profits at all.

We do exactly the same to ourselves. Puffed up with delusional optimism, we fill our minds with expectations we will never be able to fulfill. If we had been realistic, the goals we set ourselves would, for the most part, have been fulfilled. Our failures would have been offset by our successes.

Instead, we set ourselves up for continual failure, not because of lack of ability, but because our expectations allowed for no failure at all. By being determined to have it all, we spoiled our pleasure in what we did have. By avoiding the extreme of delusional optimism with an occasional touch of pessimism, you’ll find realism—the middle ground. That never hurt anyone.

Pessimists make back-ups. Optimists believe they’ll never lose their data.

Technorati Tags: positive thinking, self-delusion, unrealistic expectations, facing reality, planning

We’ve all heard about so-called stress tests to check up on the potential for banks to fail. By checking their finances and the strength of their balance sheets in advance, the government hopes to give them time to correct any problems and get ready for whatever lies ahead—this time without relying on government bail-outs and rescue plans.

The government isn’t likely to step in to rescue any of us, but it might not be such a bad idea to follow their lead and try a little self-examination before anything worse comes along.If there’s anything you need to do to ‘get in shape’ to cope with more tough times, better to get started on it now than wait until the crisis arrives.

If you had to face a stress test to check on your ‘workplace viability’, would you pass? Here are my thoughts on what such a test might contain.

• Have you kept your skills and knowledge up to date? If things get really bad—and maybe you lose your job—you’ll need them. You may be able to raise the finance at that stage to go back to school, but adding extra debt when things are already tough might not even be an option. Start doing what you can today, if it’s only spending some time at your local library, or on the Internet, looking through relevant articles and magazines.
• How stable are you financially? Most of life’s problems are a little easier to handle if you have some money behind you. If you’re up to your ears in debt, even the smallest loss of income could tip you over the edge. Sorting out financial issues always takes much longer than you expect. The earlier you get started on putting your finances into a sound state, the better.
• What is the state of your personal network? Are you keeping in touch with friends and colleagues, past and present, who might offer you help if you need it? In a tough job market, networking may be essential to avoid a long wait to find the kind of job you need.
• How strong are your family relationships? Bad upsets can put a terrific strain on personal relationships of every kind. If yours aren’t how you would like them to be, there may still be time to improve them. Should you have to face serious career or financial problems, you will need support. Your loved ones should be the first people to whom you turn. If, because of wrecked relationships, that isn’t possible, you will be adding loneliness to all your other difficulties.
• How fit are you physically? Stress, anxiety, overwork and lack of sleep are all known to undermine people’s health. You may need all your strength and vitality to survive a rough patch. Start now to make sure that you’ll be up to it.
• What about your mental state? If you feel frustrated, depressed and miserable right now, how much worse are you going to feel if your life takes a wrong turning? That probably won’t be the time to try to get yourself together. Again, start to work on your mental state now so you’ll be feeling good about yourself when it’s really needed. If you have to face job interviews, or stand up to a bullying boss, you’ll need resilience and mental confidence.
• Are your expectations realistic? If you’re assuming that nothing bad will, or can, happen to you, you are going to be surprised and angry when it does. If your target is perfection, you’ll never reach it. If your aim is to have it all, your frustration when that doesn’t happen will probably prevent you from enjoying whatever you do have.
• Are you facing up to reality? Are there things in your life that you try to avoid acknowledging or won’t deal with? We all try to put on an acceptable—even brave—face when dealing with others, but it’s a risky thing to do in the privacy of our own hearts. Trying to delude yourself about who you are, what you can do and where your problems lie causes bad upsets in normal times. When things get tough, it’s a recipe for total disaster.

Over the past few decades, introspection has got a bad name. It’s all been about action—getting things done and hitting those targets. If your whole time is taken up in running yourself ragged to keep the boss and the organization happy, it’s easy to neglect your own life. Now may well be the time to do something about that. You don’t want to find yourself overwhelmed by events that you could have dealt with better—or even prevented—if only you’d had time to get yourself together first.

Technorati Tags: personal development, careers, career choice, self-development, new job, getting a promotion

Change is all around us. We are facing a critical point in how we conduct business. Has anyone noticed?
 

Our dependence on technology-driven growth, our obsession with efficiency and with mechanistic organizational designs are dysfunctional in a business environment characterized by instability, limited resources and economic uncertainty. Yet the need for change seems to be falling on deaf ears. The people in charge prefer the status quo and reinforcing the very things that aren’t working. They can’t wait to get back to ‘business as usual’. The only change they want is to go into reverse.

The challenge for organizations today is to carry out a redesign of their business models that allows more people to contribute. That sees business less as a mechanistic entity of processes, procedures and outcomes, and more like an ecosystem: part engineering, part quantum physics, part psychology, part biology, and part neuroscience.

Adaptive strain and adaptive change

In engineering, ‘adaptive strain’ occurs when tension within a structure produces conflicts that cause destabilization that can only be resolved through a process of ‘adaptive change’—moving from the present equilibrium to another stable state in a dynamic way.

In the world today, we are witnessing this initial destabilization. Yet the move to adaptive change is anything but natural and fluid. Though we need it to survive, those in charge are unable—or unwilling—to create a new steady state. The result, if this continues, can only be breakdown.

When destabilization occurs in business, which is where we are now, fear and resistance take over, all but blocking change. There is no automatic, natural adaptation that allows resilience until a new equilibrium can be found. People are too afraid of the unknown future. They dig in their heels and cling to the status quo. In place of a natural shift to a new state, we are stuck in disorientation and ambiguity, trapped by our fear of loss.

Into the belly of the beast

Perhaps this type of radical change and transformation can only happen when you ‘hit bottom’, in business as in the rest of life. A painful journey through the ‘belly of the beast’ brings you finally to a place where intuition, creativity, ‘right knowing’, ‘right understanding’ and thus ‘right action’ arise.

This journey is neither quick nor easy. You must remain in the ‘belly’ long enough to absorb and metabolize the chaos that exists there. There is no quick fix. Only there, in the turbulence, will you discover the insights and strategies that lead to the kind of fundamental re-design necessary to re-establish connectedness between the procedures and structures of organizations and the psychological and personal needs of the people who inhabit them.

No transformation can happen until leaders recognize their dysfunctional ways of leading and managing—not just in their business models and processes, but in their personal style and character too. Sadly, it seems many businesses are continuing to choose ‘business as usual’, not seeing that it must lead back to the same uncertainly, apathy, turbulence and cynicism as before.

In this time of change, we are all called upon to recognize, and own, our dysfunctional behaviors—our avoidance of risk, the refusal to trust that makes us untrustworthy, our fear of change and ambiguity, our obsessive needing to be ‘in control’. It is these behaviors that sabotage teams and organizations; that add stress to already stressful situations; that undermine performance and sap productivity. Until we enter a conscious process of self-reflection—a journey into the belly of the beast—we will be unable to move away from the status quo and establish the dynamics that produce successful change. We cannot leave it to our leaders. All organizational members have to experience this journey, if they are to contribute what is needed to the carry the change process to completion.

Making a start

It’s a big belly down there. There’s room for everyone. If we stay caught up in resistance and denial, change cannot happen. Only when we choose to take on the journey, seeking out how our dysfunctional behaviors prevent change, can we engage in the change process. Once this happens, the organization will move from being just a mechanistic entity to being a living organism.

The road to adaptive change begins in small, incremental ways: changing your assumptions, altering your world view, making a different decision, creating a fresh strategy. It’s here that we must willingly choose to look inside and explore what threatens our self-esteem and confidence. Here we must face our fears of change head-on. It’s here that we can eliminate self-destructive and self-sabotaging patterns and engage in new behaviors that offer better support for ourselves and the organization.

If we refuse to take this inner personal journey, and stay focused on getting back to business as usual, we will be unable to adapt. Instead, we will choose failure. Preferring the devil we know to the devil we don’t, we will find only a false sense of security. In bolstering what is preventing change, we will assure the breakdown we fear so much.

Here are some questions for self-reflection to start the change process:

• How do you deal with an uncertain future? Do you hang on to your beliefs, world views and assumptions at all costs? What would happen if you let go?
• Are you and your organization facing up to the strain of adapting to turbulent times? How are you doing? What more is needed?
• Are you focusing only on the transactional (mechanistic) aspects of your business? What about the human, transformational aspects?
• Are you and your organization using outmoded models and tools to adapt to change? What is needed instead?
• Have you, personally, experienced the journey through ‘the belly of the beast?’ What was that like for you? What did you discover about yourself as a result? What changed?
• How do you, personally, deal with change? Honestly?

Technorati Tags: change, transformation, coping with uncertainty, facing up to turbulent times

According to research reported by Stefan Stern, writing for the Financial Times management blog (“Soar above the skyful of lies”), today’s managers are addicted to communication. Many never turn their phones off at all and around 25% spend three or more hours a day on their e-mails and sending text messages. “We crave flexibility, connectivity, and speed,” he writes. “But we risk turning ourselves into busy fools, bamboozled by too much noise and information.”

Stern is worried about managing information, and he has a point. Yet it seems to me we should be at least as worried—perhaps more so—about attention. If managers are spending so much time dealing with e-mails, IMs and phone calls, when are they getting any work done?

We all have only so much attention and energy available each day. While the people we depend on to run organizations are busy using up to half of each day’s energy and time quota ‘staying in touch’, they can’t also be focused on doing what they are paid to do.

Have you noticed how the web seems to be full of articles offering advice on how to deal with procrastination? Constant communication for the sake of it, or— worse—for the sake of gossip, is a wonderful way of appearing busy without doing anything. Rather than worry about procrastination, why not turn off the phone, shut down the IM and the e-mail software and try using the computer for actual work?

If people find their ‘real’ jobs so boring, perhaps they should consider doing something else. That would free up cash to save others from being laid off. If any organization truly wants to cut out unnecessary costs, I suggest beginning with letting go all the ‘busy fools’ in management and leadership positions. If this research is anywhere near correct, you could lose maybe 30% – 40% of them without any effect on the amount of useful work being done.

Technorati Tags: time management, prioitization, procrastination, use of time, cutting costs, focus

An important part of change is understanding who you are and what you value.
 

(This is a guest post from Karen Senteio)

Getting to the point of understanding who you are and what matters to you most takes work—sometimes painful work and shocking moments of revelation. In traveling this road, we become stronger and clearer about what we want. In addition, we learn something else. We come to know what we do not want. That is powerful information. Knowing where we draw our line in the sand is a power play that is ours to use when the moment is right.

One of my favorite movies is The Joy Luck Clubbased on Amy Tan’s best selling novel. It chronicles the life of four women who come of age during wartime in China, their friendship as adults and their relationships with their Americanized daughters. It is heart wrenching as it takes you through the painful personal growth of the characters, and the perseverance they show to make the decisions that shape their lives. I have watched it at least seven times and I learn something new each time. I also cry every time.

“Know your worth”

In the movie, one of the older characters visits her daughter, There she witnesses her son-in-law abusing her daughter, emotionally and verbally. Her daughter somewhere along the way lost her ability to value her own heart, dreams and spirit. In an emotional scene, the mother confronts her daughter and gives her the gift of three soul-searching words: “Know your worth.” The movie does not show how it happens, but the daughter regained her voice and spirit and abandons that miserable marriage.

Not everything is as serious as deciding whether or not to leave a marriage, but the advice the mother gave to the daughter resonated with me and has a place in my permanent bank of wisdom.

It is a simple string of three words that can make you stand strong in formidable circumstances. To understand, and be confident in, the value you possess will allow you to be clear about when it is time to take a stand, draw a line in the sand or make a move.

“Know your worth” is power you already possess

If your worth is buried somewhere in your mind, and you have not looked for it in a while, dig for it. It is there. Keep digging. It is there.

“Know your worth” is a fantastic life screen that you can apply when deciding whether to ask for more money when negotiating salary. It is the logic you apply when you decide the person you are dating is not really worthy of you—and is using you. It should be the standard you apply when you evaluate if you are spending time with folks who do not share your value system.

There is a time to compromise, but this is not the time. If you know your worth and you step out of a situation or relationship that is not worthy of you, you have moved on in a way many people never manage.

“Know your worth.” Say it aloud—or shout it—if you need more power behind it. Put it in your permanent bank of wisdom. It is a keeper. I purchased The Joy Luck Clubfor less than twenty dollars, but it is priceless. I think I will watch it again tonight.

Karen Senteio is a business and life coach and president of VERVE. She has over 20 years experience in developing and coaching individuals and groups to achieve personal success and work-life balance. You can visit her web site at Verve and contact her at Karen@vimandverve.net

Technorati Tags: authenticity, self-worth, self-confidence, personal values, living the life you deserve

It’s possible that having clear goals may be the problem, not the solution.
 

One of the commonest platitudes of management and career development is the need for clear goals, carefully set down, with marker points and ways to measure of progress. What if this is not true? Maybe it’s simply an assumption, based on nothing more than how some people like to do things.

We probably do need to have some idea of the direction we are heading towards, but that is not the same as having clearly-stated, fixed goals. The world changes quickly and those beautifully crafted goals are hard to set aside, even if they no longer make sense.

Having clear goals also tempts us to keep our eyes on them and not on what is happening around us. As the current recession has shown, when people focus narrowly on set goals, they miss most of the signs that suggest they’re headed in the wrong direction.

It’s easy to allow those same goals to dictate our lives, so they become an obsession. When that happens, people stay with them long after they have become obstacles to progress. Just look at all the failed products companies went on pouring cash into, long after it was clear they didn’t merit another penny.

Flexibility and goals don’t mix

It’s common sense to stay alert to changes in your environment that might require some change of direction. After all, when prediction is either impossible or inaccurate, the only alternative is to be ready to change on a dime. Since no one knows what the future will bring, you would expect that flexibility would be valued more highly than it is.

That this isn’t so says more about companies’ desire for imposed stability than their clarity of thought. Detailed plans and budgets provide an illusion of predictability in a world that has almost none. Leaders are so afraid of unpleasant surprises that they try to tie up the future in spreadsheets and charts. It won’t work.

If goals interfere with flexibility, we need to ask whether that’s a positive or a negative outcome. Experience suggests the latter. Whenever we ask, “Why didn’t someone see that coming?” we’re pointing to a situation in which the most likely answer is that they didn’t plan for it. What wasn’t built into the goals wasn’t looked for or even noticed.

Detailed goals lead to seeking short-term wins

Most people who set goals also set ‘markers’ or a series of targets to allow them to gauge whether they are proceeding on track.

It’s human nature to want to achieve early success, especially since that is the time when those ‘markers’ will be uppermost in the minds of those above you. Experience suggests that most plans have a far shorter shelf-life than is claimed when they are written. No organization I have ever worked in has been immune from allowing past plans to fall into abeyance as new ones are written, typically well before the point at which the final outcome of the previous plans could be known.

What this means is that people know to value ‘quick wins’ far more than steady progress towards supposedly long-term goals; and if getting quick wins means taking big risks with longer-term outcomes, few will care. Not only may they be gone long before the downside of those risks becomes clear, the whole plan will probably have been replaced by a newer one.

Goals narrow the focus

It has been fashionable to judge performance by reference to goals achieved, then allocate rewards accordingly. It should therefore be no surprise that people have fixed their attention exclusively on what produces a monetary outcome, even if that means crossing ethical boundaries or ignoring what, by any other criterion, should be more important.

You can liken this to having ‘tunnel vision’. Whatever is outside the narrow path ahead defined by set objectives (many set months or even years into the past) is judged irrelevant.

Imagine walking along a busy street and only being able to see what lay directly ahead of you. You would be totally unaware of anything approaching you from any angle but dead ahead; unaware of passing traffic or people beside or behind you. How safe would you be? What would be the risks that you missed because you couldn’t turn your head?

I suspect none of us would be willing to make the experiment. Indeed, those unfortunate people who do suffer from physical tunnel vision are generally classified as blind or disabled, in need of special care and consideration. Yet tens of thousands of managers and leaders put themselves in almost the same situation on a daily basis.

As Tom Robbins wrote in “Still Life with Woodpecker”:

“Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good idea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comes out reduced in scale and value, but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended.”

Are you suffering from ‘goal intoxication’?

For most people, a glass of wine or beer now and again is a pleasant source of relaxation. For alcoholics, it is a life-threatening obsession. It’s much the same with goal setting and planning.

Pursuing set goals sounds like a good idea, but only until you consider it in greater depth. Then you can see the drawbacks as well as the possible benefits. Whether they come from restricted flexibility, seeking out short-term wins and ignoring the wider risks, or simply the narrowing of focus that blinds you to approaching dangers coming from unexpected directions, firm goals need to be treated with great care.

Given the prevalence of silly phrases like, “What cannot be measured cannot be managed,” it’s not surprising people are seduced by the illusion of predictability and stability having clear plans and goals offers. Life in uncertain, the future ambiguous and our circumstances changeable—all attributes the human mind finds it difficult to deal with in any comfort. Yet relying on illusions is unlikely to help, even when they are decked out with PowerPoint slides and pages of tables and ratios.

The answer may be more attention and intention

Intention is the decision to aim for some long-term outcome that makes sense at any given time, but remains flexible to change as needed.

Unlike plans and goals, intentions remain broad and inclusive. They lack the precision of the set targets and timescales, yet more than make up for that by being adaptable to changing circumstances. To have a firm intention is like knowing you want to drive to Boston or Istanbul, but staying flexible along the way to whatever route makes most sense in current traffic and weather conditions.

Attention means staying alert at all times to anything that might affect your progress or the appropriateness of your intended destination. It means going along with all your senses on high alert, constantly looking around to see what might be approaching from unexpected directions.

Intention and attention, taken together, will see you along the way with less risk and more chance of success than that closely-argued and detailed planning document. If you don’t want to waste it, you could always burn it. It will provide more light that way.

Technorati Tags: goals, goal setting, planning, strategic planning, setting targets, predictability, future plans